FAIL TO PLAN, PLAN TO FAIL

Fail to plan, plan to fail.  NFFO Chief Executive Mike Cohen argues that we need a plan for our seas and a strategy for developing the fishing industry’s place in them.

The NFFO has been campaigning for a national strategy for fishing for some time now and the need is only becoming more apparent with every passing day.

Everyone who works at or lives by the sea has long realised that the ways that it is being used have changed fundamentally in recent years. Once, it carried goods and people, and it produced food. Now it also produces electricity; it supplies building materials; it carries our electronic communications; it gives up fossil fuels from beneath it and has carbon emissions and nuclear waste buried in their place; it is ‘conserved’; it is a playground.

As the NFFO has consistently pointed out, this transition has occurred piecemeal. The sea has become a new frontier, open for exploration and exploitation by whoever has the power to stake a claim. No strategy has underpinned this free-for-all and we have warned on numerous occasions that, if this is allowed to continue, those users of the sea without deep pockets or powerful political connections will be soon squeezed out. Fishers are firmly in this category. Despite pursuing a calling that has helped to feed the people of these islands for millennia, they must pay for a licence to pursue their livelihoods, but in doing so acquire no right to use it. Farmers can own the land they work, but fishers can’t own their fishing grounds. Our seabed is owned by the Crown Estate, which leases out portions of its property portfolio for profit. This makes it possible for others to take parts of the sea that we depend on for food production and effectively privatise them: developing that area for their own benefit, in such a way that excludes fishing.

This is happening already. The Crown Estate has recently announced plans to lease out the seabed for offshore wind farm construction. They hope to see 125 GW of new offshore electricity generating capacity leased out by 2050. At the same time, the Scottish government has plans for power stations generating up to 42 GW north of the border. Much of this new development will involve floating wind farms, which are acknowledged to be incompatible with fishing activity. At an estimated size of 250Km² per gigawatt (and acknowledging that some existing wind farms take up significantly more space than that), this will occupy 41,750 km² of sea space – a little under twice the area of Wales.

This represents the industrialisation of the marine environment on an almost unimaginable scale and its justification has not been made clear. In addition to this planned 167 GW of new generating capacity at sea, there are plans for 24 GW of new nuclear power generation on land and the government has already announced support for 2 GW of new solar power, with more to come. The UK currently consumes around 30 GW of electricity and is already capable of generating almost all of that domestically. Clearly, as we switch to using more electricity to heat homes and power vehicles that demand will increase, but it is surely stretching credulity to assume that it will increase by 550% in the next 26 years. No doubt the multinational energy giants – almost all non-UK corporations – that build and control the offshore power stations in UK waters will find a way to make even larger fortunes from them, but the benefit to the people of the UK is opaque, particularly when their construction may come at the cost of the UK’s marine environment, food security and coastal jobs.

Alongside the offshore construction gold rush, there are increasingly loud calls for large parts of the sea to be closed to fishing because of ‘nature’. 38% of the UK’s EEZ is already subject to some form of conservation designation. The goal of ‘nature recovery’ is cited at every turn. Even the Crown Estate uses the phase continuously – and seemingly without irony – when discussing how it plans to lease off the seabed for industrial development. There is a distinct reluctance to define terms here. ‘Recovery’ implies return to a prior condition, but what point in the past is it intended that we should reproduce? Before offshore developers started digging up the seabed? Before the age of modern shipping? Before humans used the sea at all? Whichever historical point we choose, how are we supposed to know what the marine environment was like back then, so that we know what actions to take to recover that state? Given the almost complete lack of baseline scientific surveys conducted to support the marine conservation process, we don’t even have a particularly clear idea about what the marine environment is like now.

We are doing more things in the sea now than at any time in human history, so why is it almost always just fishing that the loudest proponents of ‘nature’ want to prohibit? It all starts to look a bit performative: promoting a sense of permanent crisis, while placing the blame only on those without the money or power to defend themselves. The double standard is striking: theatrical dismay at every fishing net that skims the seabed to produce food, but seeming unconcern about the thousands of square kilometres that will be dug up, trenched and continually scoured by anchor chains to accommodate new power stations.

Contradictions like this abound. We must conserve the marine environment, yet also build power stations there that far exceed our energy needs. We will protect the security of our food supply, but restrict fishing on the shakiest of evidential foundations. We must take urgent action to combat climate change, but also restrict one of the least carbon intensive sources of dietary protein. Growth is vital and coastal communities will be supported, but we consistently privilege the demands of foreign corporations and the self-appointed and well-funded champions of undefined ‘nature’ over the economic and social wellbeing of working-class people.

If any of this was being done in pursuit of an ultimate aim, for the betterment of the UK at large, we would have no grounds for complaint. We elect parliamentarians to take decisions about the future of our nation. Very often those decisions are truly difficult. Once taken, they are very likely to bring hardship to some even as they benefit the majority. As long as such decisions are taken in full possession of the facts, however, with a clear underlying rationale and an understanding of the consequences, then – while we may not like the outcome – there can be no injustice in the process. That is emphatically not true here, however. We are drifting towards an unplanned future, where short-term thinking and empty but eye-catching slogans have benefitted the few but disadvantaged the many, while no-one takes responsibility.

We need a plan. Now

The UK needs a national fishing strategy that will stop our industry being squeezed out of the marine space; will protect core fishing grounds and promote sustainable harvesting; will improve safety and working conditions; will support job creation; and will allow fishing to realise its potential as a core part of revitalised coastal economies. This will not be easy, but it is possible – and the benefits could be enormous.

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