Global Ocean Treaty

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, and I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing the debate. The decision to hold Westminster Hall debates slightly earlier on a Thursday is paying off, because it is giving more of us an opportunity to speak on behalf of our constituents on issues that are important to them.

Like the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), I have had dozens of communications— nearly 200—from constituents expressing their determination to see the global ocean treaty ratified and ensure that this debate is well attended. It is particularly encouraging to see Conservative Members make the positive case for multilateralism and the rule of international law. I want to assure hon. Members that the SNP joins the support for the principles of the treaty and the calls for its immediate ratification by the UK Government. If the hon. Member for Torbay’s private Member’s Bill helps to speed that up, so much the better.

The treaty goes by many different names: in full, it is known as the legally binding international instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. More simply, it is known as the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty, the high seas treaty or, as most of us have referred to, the global ocean treaty.

How we name things is important, and sometimes the high seas or international waters are described as some sort of frontier, which evokes dated imagery of unexplored territory that is there to be exploited. Previous frontiers, whether the American west or the interior of Africa, were no such things to the people, flora and fauna that had been there for hundreds if not thousands of years before European or other explorers arrived. The approach of the treaty is important in that it is an assumption not in favour of the exploitation of resources, but in favour of the conservation of the marine environment and the sustainable and managed development of any economic potential.

That potential is significant, as we have heard. Around half of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but less than 2% of that area is under any kind of legal protection. At the same time, nearly 10% of global marine species are estimated to be at risk of extinction, so there is a need to rapidly enhance our approach and to ensure that treaty obligations can be undertaken and held to account. That means that there will be another round of COPs, but that is vital if we are to meet the 30 by 30 target that was spoken of by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and others.

The point about plastic pollution has also been well made by a number of hon. Members, starting with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). Many people in Glasgow North, myself included, recently took part in the Big Plastic Count to better understand our plastic use and how we can reduce our plastic footprint. There is also a campaign for a global plastics treaty that might sit alongside the oceans framework. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what progress has been made on that to ensure a just transition away from the use of single-use plastics in particular.

In Scotland, we stand ready to do our part. Our marine environment is an integral part of life in the country. It is difficult to go anywhere in Scotland and be particularly far from the sea. I am not sure how this compares to South West Bedfordshire, but I think the furthest point in Scotland, Glen Quoich in Braemar, is only about 65 km from the coast. If one goes up to any elevated point, it is not difficult to see either the sea or something that flows into the sea.

The marine environment in Scotland supports about 8,000 species of plants and animals, and new discoveries are always ongoing. Under the SNP Government, some 37% of Scotland’s territorial waters are now designated as marine protected areas, including 247 sites for nature conservation. The Scottish Government have a vision of

“a clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse marine and coastal environment”

managed in a way

“that meets the long term needs of people and nature.”

They, too, have adopted the idea of a blue economy approach to recognise the mutually beneficial nature of, and connectivity between, sustainable economic growth, inclusiveness and wellbeing, and protection of the environment and biodiversity.

Unfortunately, some of the UK Government’s actions to date do not necessarily always meet the same high ambitions. Their decision to grant new oil licences is not a long-term solution to energy security or the cost of energy crisis and is actively damaging to the progress that needs to be made on tackling climate change. It is estimated that the Rosebank oilfield, which the Government seem determined to press ahead with, would, over its lifespan, equal the annual emissions of about 90 countries and 400 million people. The development company’s own environmental statement admits that the construction of new oil wells would have the potential to lead to wider changes in the seabed, the direct loss of species and habitat, and wider indirect disturbances.

The Government have to be very careful about how they use some of the legal mechanisms and instruments contained in this treaty or others or in their own competence. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) spoke—not to my surprise—about the situation in the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Chagos islands. There was concern that when the marine protected area there was introduced, that was less in the interests of the marine environment and more in the interests of preventing resettlement of or the right of return to those islands. Of course, in the end, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that the UK should have engaged more fully with Mauritius before making that declaration, and in 2021 the UN’s International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled that the UK Government do not hold sovereignty over the Chagos islands—but perhaps it turns out that these are just more decisions by “foreign” courts that the UK Government choose to ignore.

That would be my only note of caution. I do not want to break the consensus that we have heard today, but I will just gently suggest to the hon. Member for Torbay that although his initiative today is incredibly commendable and there is clearly consensus in favour of the global ocean treaty and its rapid ratification, the reality is that in recent years the Government have not had the best track record of respecting their international obligations and have been simply dismissing or ignoring decisions or commitments that they find inconvenient.

Likewise, the Government have to consider carefully the message that their attitude sends to other countries around the world. We cannot pick and choose our obligations under international law. If we support the rules-based international order, if we support the treaties and mechanisms that have attempted to secure peace and security, or at least progress towards peace and security, and the protection of the environment since the second world war, we have to support and accept those institutions and agreements in their entirety. By all means make a case for reform, but that has to be done through the order that exists in the first place. That is particularly true if we expect and request other countries to do the same, so it also has to be true of our approach to the global ocean treaty.

The Government have a responsibility to current and future generations to do all they can to protect the marine environment. Water is life, as my friends in Malawi often say, and the waters that make up the seas are home to life in abundance. They are part of a global ecosystem on which we all depend, in a fragile balance that we damage or destroy at great peril to all of us. The ocean treaty has been hard won, and now the challenge is for the UK Government to play their part to ensure that the treaty delivers on its ambitions.