Marine Protected Areas
(asked on 27th March 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Government's implementation, management and monitoring of marine protection areas; what assessment he has made of the potential merits of doubling the size of the area under marine protection; and if he will make a statement.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.
Defra recently laid a report in Parliament setting out progress towards establishing an MPA network (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/marine-protected-areas-network-report-2012-to-2018). This report includes progress that has been made in implementing, managing and monitoring MPAs.
To date, 36% of English waters are protected in MPAs. On its own, the total area of MPAs is not a good measure of the effectiveness of the network. We have published a comprehensive set of ecological network targets that we are working towards:
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/100705_ENG_v10.pdf
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