To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to tackle ocean acidification.
Answered on
20 July 2017
From 2010-2016, the Department partnered with the Natural Environment Research Council and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (now Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) to invest £12.4 million in the UK Ocean Acidification research programme (UKOA).
The programme provided baseline data for UK seas and supported development of long-term monitoring strategies. This fed into the Oslo Paris Commission (OSPAR) Joint Assessment and Monitoring Programme (JAMP). UKOA scientists helped establish the international Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) initiative, which now involves around 30 other countries.
In March 2017, a detailed update on progress made by UKOA was made to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry on ocean acidification, which is available at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees.
At the recent UN Ocean Conference in June 2017, the Department chaired an event in partnership with the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network and others. The Intergovernmental Call for Action agreed at the Conference identified the threat posed by ocean acidification and the need to develop effective adaptation measures to protect ocean biodiversity. The Department will continue to support regional co-ordination in monitoring ocean acidification through OSPAR.