from Holyrood Magazine, 28 January 2007
Scotland is defined by the sea. The crashing waves, the ragged cliffs, the glistening sands encircle the nation’s history, feed its culture, and help shape its psychology.
With a shoreline stretching some 11,000 kilometres, hundreds of islands scattered over vast reaches of ocean and 70% of the population living within ten kilometres of the coast, the sea could hardly be more vital. Yet, bizarrely, it has been virtually ignored by governments.
Activities on land have been planned, managed and controlled for centuries, but the sea has been left to look after itself. It has been dredged for huge quantities of fish, exploited for oil and gas and used as a toxic dumping ground, but it has never been the subject of a strategic plan by ministers.
The logic, if there was any, has been crude. The ocean’s resources have been plundered as if they were infinite, with no care for the future. Whole populations of fish have been brought to the brink of extinction, while millions of tonnes of oil have been pumped ashore to fuel the fires that are warming the globe.
At the same time the sea has been treated like a gigantic, bottomless rubbish bin. Radioactive waste, shiploads of live bombs, thousands of drums of poisonous chemicals, rivers of raw sewage and all manner of other dangerous debris have simply been chucked in, with the vague hope that they wouldn’t come back to haunt us.
Some of the most disturbing facts of the modern marine age are about the plastic waste found in seabirds. In 1994 42 out of 315 dead puffins in the North Sea had plastic and rubber in their stomachs. In 2003 and 2004, Dutch researchers found plastic scraps in 19 out of every 20 dead fulmars. Each bird had swallowed an average of 44 pieces of plastic, with one from the Belgian coast having as many as 1,603 scraps in its stomach.
Scottish seas are home to some four million seabirds, as well as 120,000 seals, a thousand species of fish, and 22 types of whale, dolphin and porpoise. Despite the income they generate from tourism and wildlife-watching, they are suffering from neglect, or worse.
Some of the bad habits of the past have ended. Edinburgh and Glasgow’s sewage is no longer taken out and dumped at sea, most nuclear waste is waiting on land for disposal and fishing is regulated by European law, after a fashion. There is now widespread understanding that the sea, like the air, can no longer be taken for granted.
But there are still many problems to be overcome. Despite all the regulation, fish stocks are still under threat, with 16 out of 21 Scottish species, including cod and Atlantic salmon, said to be “beyond sustainable limits”. Salmon farms have proliferated in sea lochs, with growing concerns about contamination and disease.
Though Scotland’s oil production may have peaked, there are still millions more barrels to be brought ashore, with attendant risks. Pollution and litter from land and ships continue to infest the marine environment, and kill wildlife.
And there are new issues looming that require urgent attention. Alien species introduced from other oceans can wreak havoc with native wildlife. The warming of the climate triggered by pollution will cause the seas to swell, currents to shift and feeding patterns to changes, with untold consequences for marine life and industry. In recent years, seabird populations in some areas have crashed because of food shortages, possibly linked to global warming.
In order to tackle climate change, more proposals are bound to be made for offshore wind farms, followed by major wave power and tidal schemes, along with sub-sea cables. Though cheered by some, these will doubtless be strongly opposed by others. There may be pressures for other offshore developments, like carbon capture and storage.
Over the last few years, there has been a growing recognition that something had to be done. Coastal communities have begun to find their voices, environmental groups have cranked up their campaigning, and politicians across the spectrum have started expressing concern.
One of the major controversies that dramatised the need for reform was the plan to pumps millions of tonnes of oil between ships in the Firth of Forth. An oil multinational, Skaugen PetroTrans, wanted to use an anchorage a few miles off the Fife coast to transfer Russian crude from the Baltic to ocean-going tankers.
Although the plans were fiercely opposed by all the communities around the Forth, there seemed to be little that governments, either in Edinburgh or London, could do. The plans fell to be assessed by Forth Ports, a private company that stood to gain millions of pounds a year from licensing the oil transfers.
This was not, as many pointed out, a satisfactory situation. Despite the threat that oil spillages posed to the wildlife and businesses in the Forth, the plans seemed to fall through a gaping hole in the middle of the eight pieces of legislation that surrounded it.
At least for the moment, the threat from the ship-to-ship oil plan appears to have been averted, thanks to some quick rule-changing by the Scottish Government, and a similar legislative move in Westminster by the Labour backbencher, Mark Lazarowicz. But the wider problem it exposed - that governments are failing to manage the sea - still needs to be fixed.
The previous administration, under former First Minister Jack McConnell, realised that action was needed. The experts it convened under the banner of the Advisory Group on Marine and Coastal Strategy (AGMACS) published their findings in March 2007. They recommended setting up a Scottish marine management organisation and a new system of “marine spatial planning”.
The broad aim should be that of “living within environmental limits”, AGMACS concluded. Happily, the challenge now seems to have been taken up by the Scottish Nationalist environment minister, Richard Lochhead, who launched his ‘Sustainable Seas Task Force’ in January. The aim is to come up with a new legal regime to govern the marine environment within a matter of months.
“Our new streamlined legislation will deliver better protection for the future,” Lochhead said. “The aim, among other things, is to introduce a new system of planning for the sea, better nature conservation and improvements to licensing and regulation of the marine environment.”
He added: “I will also look to the Task Force to consider what additional powers need to be devolved to Scotland. I believe in the offshore zone - between 12 and 200 nautical miles from the shore – further devolution, especially for functions such as marine planning and nature conservation, is a much needed priority.”
Lochhead’s commitment has been warmly welcomed by environmental groups, though not without caveats. “We look forward to working with the task force to develop the AGMACS recommendations into specific legislative proposals,” said Lloyd Austin, head of conservation policy with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Scotland.
“The Scottish bill will need to provide for a network of marine protected areas, a comprehensive system of marine spatial planning, and an integrated management authority - all operating in close co-ordination with parallel developments at the UK and EU levels.”
Calum Duncan, from the Marine Conservation Society, pointed out that considerable time and effort had gone into developing plans for better management of the seas in the last few years. “Time now really is of the essence,” he said.
“We therefore urge that recommendations coming from the group be swiftly taken forward through a Scottish marine bill. Proper protection for Scotland's marine environment must form the core of the proposed legislation and include a robust network of nationally important marine areas.”
Aside from the worry that the SNP government may take too long rerunning old arguments, there are other, unspoken, fears. The SNP’s strong support for the fishing industry in the north east, often voiced by Lochhead in opposition, might be too influential when the legislation comes to be drafted. The devil will be in the detail, according to campaigners.
The SNP’s tendency to turn every issue into an argument for independence may not help either. There may be good arguments for devolving some powers, but environmental groups are privately anxious that progress doesn’t get waylaid by a fruitless and high-profile spat with Westminster.
Whatever happens, it is clear that the SNP’s success in transforming good intentions into good marine legislation will be a key test of its environmental commitment. The future of the seas depend upon it.
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