Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has taken recent steps to (a) strengthen protections for and (b) promote the restoration of saltmarsh habitats.

HM Government recognises the important role that nature-based solutions, including blue carbon habitats, such as saltmarsh can play to prevent biodiversity loss and support adaptation and resilience to climate change, alongside their carbon sequestration benefits.

England’s Environment Agency (EA) reports on the extent and zonation of saltmarsh in England. The latest report (looking at saltmarsh area change over a decade from 2006-2009 to 2016-2019) is published on GOV.UK and has mapped existing restoration sites and supports further restoration practices. 38% of UK waters are already in Marine Protected Areas, covering the majority of saltmarsh habitats. Our focus is now on ensuring these are effectively managed.

The EA also lead the ‘Restoring Meadows, Marsh and Reef Initiative’, working with partners across government, the eNGO sector, academia and industry to streamline regulatory processes, build capacity and share knowledge to facilitate the accelerated restoration of estuarine and coastal habitats, with an initial focus on three priority habitats - saltmarshes, seagrass beds and native oyster reefs. At COP26, as part of this initiative, the EA also launched its Saltmarsh Restoration Handbook, a guide written by practitioners and experts to support groups wanting to undertake their own saltmarsh restoration project, one of 3 ‘Blue Carbon Restoration Handbooks’.

We are also working to increase private investment in nature. The £10 million Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund is also supporting three projects with almost £300k of grants, to explore, develop and then test methodologies to measure and verify the carbon storage potential in saltmarsh habitats. This includes a project to develop a Saltmarsh Carbon code from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Finally, through the UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership, UK Administrations are working with the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Estate and Defra to continue to strengthen our evidence base relating to blue carbon habitats including saltmarsh. The first aim of the Partnership has been to identify and then clearly set out the most pressing research questions relating to blue carbon within an Evidence Needs Statement that will act as a signal to the research community for further work.