This page has the transcript of the Seascapes webinar held on 20 October 2025. You can also see additional questions we gave written answers to during or after the webinar.
More information
Panellists and presenters:
- Liam McAleese, Director of Our Natural World, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- Morven Robertson, Funding Manager, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- David Tudor, Pelagos Consulting
Welcome and introductions
Liam McAleese
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this webinar where we will be exploring a new report on scaling up marine nature recovery across the UK. We're really pleased that you could join us today, and hope that you find the next hour useful. I'm Liam McAleese. I'm Director of the Our Natural World impact area at the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. I'm here with my colleagues, Morven Robertson and with David Tudor. For accessibility purposes, I will describe myself, so I am a White, middle aged man with brown eyes, thinning black hair, wearing a blue shirt and a dark blue jumper. And I'm dialing in from Cumbria today. I will ask Morven and then David to also introduce themselves.
Morven Robertson
Hi, I'm Morven, Robertson, I'm a funding manager at Esmée, and I mainly lead on our marine work. I'm a White youngish woman with blonde hair and green eyes. I'm wearing a brown jumper, and I'm dialing in from a slightly sunny Exeter.
David Tudor
Hi everybody. Good afternoon. My name is David Tudor. I am a marine scientist, and I work for Pelagos. I'm a White, middle aged man, dark hair, dark brown eyes, wearing a green shirt today, and I'm speaking to you from Bristol.
Liam McAleese
Great. So just a few practicalities before we start. Live captioning is available for this session, and there is a link in the chat if you'd like to see the captions in a separate window, you can also click the closed caption button at the bottom of the window to see them within zoom.
Please do post questions at any point using the Q&A facility which you'll find at the bottom of your screens, I would encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant if you really want to see that one asked, and you can do that by clicking on the thumbs up icon next to the question. We will try and answer as many questions as possible. We will prioritise those questions that have been up-voted. If there are any that we miss, we will answer them after. My colleague, Simon Wightman is also online and will be helping out behind the scenes, answering some of the questions live that the panel won't be able to get to.
And please, don't worry if you miss anything. We're recording the webinar. We will share the transcripts with the questions that are covered, and also the presentation material and the slides. Just before I hand over to David and Morven, for those that don't know, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. We are an independent UK charitable foundation. We make grants, social and impact investments on the environment, community and social justice. And supporting work with communities, fishers, farmers, on nature recovery at land and at sea really brings these themes together. Now it feels to me like both a daunting time and exciting time to talk about seascape restoration, daunting because, of course, we know the scale of the crisis we face, but exciting because we have seen some positive progress in recent months, from the High Seas Treaty to measures on bottom trawling and marine protected areas. And we know that through this research and through the work of people on this call, that there are already some ambitious seascape scale restorations happening both here in the UK and internationally. So it feels timely to be presenting this report to you today, and we commissioned the report not only to inform our own thinking on our current and future work, but actually to be as useful and as used by many people as possible.
As David will outline, the findings and the report are based on consultation and engagement with a number of people from different sectors and with expertise, including people who have joined us today on this call. We are only a small funder and a small cog in this space, and we believe that the messages in the report are relevant for many others, whether that's other funders, NGO partners, public and private sector colleagues.
Morven will then share our early thinking on where the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation believe that we can make a contribution to these recommendations. I should stress that our thinking is in its early stages, and we may not yet have answers to some of your questions. But nonetheless, we're grateful for your feedback and reflections on the findings. So if I just hand over to David now to talk us through the key findings of the report.
Thank you, Liam for that. I'll just check that you can see the presentation. Do shout if you can't, yeah, great to be here. Thank you so much, Liam and Morven.
Report findings
David Tudor
This piece of work has been going on for a number of months, and the culmination was a report which I'm going to talk about, which had some recommendations, illustrated some opportunities, but then really delved into a number of strategic recommendations in 10 areas. And I look forward to the conversation later on and questions. And so this is what I'm going to talk about, really, just very briefly on some of the early items around why this is important, the purpose and scope of the report, as Liam has already outlined some of it, and then some of the opportunities, as well as the recommendations, and ending with a bit of hope, really.
So just briefly to start on and lots of you will be aware of this. Lots of you will know this information. It's important to think about this in the context of the UK. As you can see, there are really some pretty worrying and daunting figures around the decline we've seen across the UK in particular habitats, but there's also been a lot of impact across seabirds, biodiversity loss within the sea and estuarine environments, and right across the board, from mammals to birds to the whole ecosystem. And these losses aren't really isolated. You know, it's systemic pressures that are causing these, whether that's over exploitation, whether that's coastal development, things such as pollution, we hear a lot about, of course, climate change.
And again, it's really important to just acknowledge that these aren't just ecological consequences, but also really affecting the whole social fabric of the country, in the world, really, and whether that's wellbeing or whether that's the economy, really, and I think that impact is being felt right across the world, but also here in the UK, on the wellbeing of some of the coastal communities.
So why does this matter really? And I think what we'll talk about today is where we can look to in an important but small way, reversing that ecological decline. And it's thinking about nature and people together. And a lot of what we're going to talk about today is exactly that. It's nature and people together, really. All the services that marine existence provide, of course, whether that's storing carbon, preventing storms, supporting the cultural and recreational value of the coast, and, of course, industries and community, important things such as fisheries as well. This marine recovery we're going to talk about today really helps all of those things and helps communities to thrive. And you know, very often, the most successful projects are those that are locally-led, are rooted in place, I mean, driven by people with a close connection to the sea.
Supporting these efforts, you know, talking here with hosted by Esmée Fairbairn, as a really important funder, but it's not just funding. It requires, really, it's that long-term commitment from from many across the spectrum, with us, government, the public, as well as funders. So we're here to talk about some of the findings of the report. And I just wanted to flag that is the report there, for those of you who'd like to look at it in a bit more depth, it's on the Esmée Fairbairn website, and there's a QR code, which you can you can find, just been recently, published just a few weeks ago, really.
The purpose and scope of it, and Liam has touched on some of this really is to support funders. And that's not just Esmée Fairbairn, really, because there's a whole myriad of funders interested in the marine coastal realm right across the UK, and that includes government as well. So government, philanthropy, corporates in all of these organisations that can fund marine restoration. And I think it's that long term systemic change that I've really tried to focus on here. The report looks at the insights from practitioners. We've talked to a lot of practitioners over the last number of months, as well as government, and really try to get into the policy, the advocacy, the active restoration we can talk about later on, but also the integration of the freshwater, terrestrial and marine environments, really.
And I think that the stat there, the last paragraph is really key in the report from the Environmental Funders Network. They talked about that in the coastal and marine ecosystems theme they have, which is within the environment, greater environment theme that marine coastal just makes up 2.4% of the total giving really so not only is the environment a small subset of the greater giving realm, marine is a small proportion of that as well. Just to reasonably quickly go through some of the key findings and opportunities, but probably more importantly, to focus on some of the recommendations.
Through the research, through the conversations, as well as the many webinars and contact from right across the practitioner and government community that's interested in marine ecosystem recovery, a crucial thing that really, really emerges all the time is this systems view, and the report emphasises to funders that they can play a pivotal role in really enabling this collaboration between the different ecosystems, riverine, marine and estuarine as well, really, because it's important to address those and overcome those barriers that will help the recovery. And I'll talk a bit more about that in the recommendations.
Community-led. This came through a lot, through some of the discussions around the locally embedded projects are the most powerful, but they're very often under supported. Now, that is not to say, of course, that projects need to be community-led, or they're only successful if they are community-led. That's not the point, really. This blend of different projects is important, but certainly community-led and community embedded leads to better outcomes.
Another key finding an opportunity, really, is around the, I guess, the fragmented nature of marine restoration funding and the short-termism that exists. So while there are new initiatives such as SMEEF (Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund), which is the Scotland fund, and Marine Fund Cymru, which show promise, these large, or potentially large funds, which draw in private money into public hands to disseminate, there's also lots of other funding avenues, of course. You know, philanthropy, individuals, corporates, as I mentioned earlier, really so that long-term funding collaboration is really, really key to all of this in the future.
And just touch on the next one there, an opportunity around climate smart or climate smart design, when your projects really should assess the climate risk that we all face and design them for adaptation. Very much found through the course of this research that the impacts of climate change on the outcomes of a project are really, really built in. It's often thought about, often considered, often talked about. There's often the feeling that these challenges are too big to address and therefore not considered fully.
And we hear a lot today about seascape and a 'wholescape' approach. Many different interpretations of those, but essentially, what it's about is growing from a small, fragmented area, and connectivity is really key as well. Connectivity between habitats and to allow true ecosystem scale restoration to occur, really. So that wholescape philosophy, as it's called, sometimes, the seascape around connectivity is really something that's an opportunity, as I see it, for future funding and for future marine system recovery.
But also the advocacy and policy work and some of the legal changes that are required, really, for marine ecosystem recovery are often, these days, slightly overlooked. It's very difficult, it's very long term, it's very you know, just the whole complexity of the law really means that these areas are often slightly underfunded when compared to more active restoration, where the results can be seen maybe in a couple of years, rather than the slightly longer term, larger scale advocacy and policy work.
Ultimately, the conclusion there is we need to do both. But certainly the advocacy work is is perhaps underfunded at the moment. So just delving into some of the recommendations in the next five or six minutes or so, I'm going to go through here, and you can see these in the report, are 10 areas or 10 themes, and within those 10 areas, there's some overlap, really, within the recommendations that some can sit in one area, some can sit in another area. I want to try to today, really just summarise some of those strategic recommendations which are in the report. And just again, to emphasise, these recommendations cover the whole myriad of marine restoration, they're aimed at a myriad of funders, but also practitioners. So practitioners who are involved in helping marine recovery within the UK range from government, small NGOs, large NGOs, community groups, and really the breadth of all of that is tried to be covered here. Many people on this call, and many people who see this webinar may think, I know all this, and I've been doing it for years. But the other groups want to get involved in marine ecosystem recovery who don't know lots of this work, and therefore this is aimed at helping all of those. So just to go through them. And again, I want to go through every point, and I won't go through every part in detail, because you can see it in the report, really,
But as many people know who work in marine recovery, the time it takes really to see improvement, the time it takes to see long term stability within the marine environment, is quite long. One might see results quickly if, for example, an area is protected or some pressures are removed. That longer term, true recovery takes time. If one is involved in active restoration, such as planting sea grass, for example, or oysters, certainly, those very early years are much about discovery, much about trial and error. So, the funding at the moment is short term, two, sometimes three years, occasionally five years. The recommendation is really that funders have a horizon of around 5 to 20 years. That's not suggesting that funders need to suddenly come up with 20 year grants, but thinking about that long term, and as I'll talk about later, really collaborating with others and other funders is what's going to be key to look to that development phase, in other words, the early stages, whether that's really looking at early stage idea development, or even an idea that's more than just very early stage, but needs a bit of work, for example, on licensing or to get some monitoring in place. That early development phase is key, and it needs to be longer than sometimes seen - six months or a year. It needs to be at least two years, really, to give, give real progress.
And I think the other thing around we're going to hear a lot about - community-led or smaller organisations. I think the flexibility is really important. So you know sometimes that the hurdles that some community groups have to get over to achieve funding is difficult for them. There's very good reasons why they're in place, but more help really is needed for those community groups, and that may not suit one funder, but it might suit another funder. Again, that funder collaboration is important. I'm just gonna run through these. Continue to run through these a little bit more quickly. Now, actually quite a lot to get through and I want to make sure that we focus on some key points, really.
This community leadership, which I've talked about a few times. Now, it's really critical that some community-led projects are able to achieve, or help to achieve, the seascape scale impact. Now, whilst in some instances, there isn't the capacity or the knowledge that some of the other large groups have, that long term embedded of a project of marine recovery is needed, and to get that the community-led or community really intrinsically involved, is critical for that longevity, really. So, supporting local communities to lead where they want to lead, I think, is really important, and part of that is supporting by training, whether that's peer to peer, from others, and also shared resources to allow that kind of community empowerment to believe they can get involved.
This came through in some of the early discussion I gave you around the opportunities. Particularly systems view is, I think, just absolutely paramount. I think again, there's nothing wrong. And there is definitely a place for single ecosystem recovery, or single ecosystem projects, or projects to focus on a certain area. But I'm going to want to press really is that for larger scale and for the longevity of recovery, then a systems view is increasingly needed. And I think those, as I talked about earlier, there's policy along with active restoration, crossing that land sea interface, from the riverine to the estuarine to the marine, having projects that really cover that spans is increasingly important, really, I think, and I think encouraging projects that integrate that policy change and pressure alleviation with other work is more and more important. And I think that catchment wide approach, the whole wholescape approach, is going to be more and more important as we progress, really. And I think that bottom point there about more diverse funders and increased funding is needed to influence these systemic changes. There's certain funders, obviously, that like to do certain things, and other funders prefer to do policy, and others prefer to do active restoration. Well, I think that diversity of funding needs to increase, really, to ensure that these systemic changes or these pressures can be dealt with as much as single ecosystem recovery projects.
Something that comes up quite a lot, really, in both community groups, but also in the more established organisations that are working in this space is around the data and the support required around projects. So if somebody wants to do something and they know an area well, it might be where they live, or it might be something that they've worked on before, it may not be the best site. So that helping with that robust site selection is really important. Now certain organisations and certain government initiatives, such as the ReMeMaRe (Restoring Meadow, Marsh and Reef) initiative, led by the Environment Agency, which brings together lots of organisations, including lots around government around the UK, is providing more and more and more information around suitability, and that should continue, and that's to be encouraged, really.
Then there's around the licensing process, which can be expensive and difficult and long. That licensing process exists for very good reasons. It's there to protect the marine environment, but it's also quite difficult to navigate, especially for those who don't know how to navigate it or have never done it before. So that training is needed there, and more and more guidance, I think, is critical for that, as well as really supporting them. Capacity for new entrances into marine recovery is important as well.
I mentioned the climate smart element, really. I also like to impress that there's increasing, or has been increasing, focus around the blue carbon elements of marine restoration. And I think this is really critical, but should be remembered. This is not the sole driver. The biodiversity benefits should be encouraged to be highlighted, and for funders to fund that as well. And blue carbon is a co-benefit, along with all these other ecosystem recovery benefits, I think that's really important.
And I've already touched on the climate resilient habitats and species need to be put into planning more for climate smart projects, but also, really to think about restoring those blue carbon habitats to help with the wider environment.
So this is further information here around some of the coordination that's needed. So the first one there really is around establishing a UK-wide marine funders network. Now that may well exist, or perhaps it does exist among certain groups. But what I'm really talking about here is is full range of funders. I mentioned some of the initiatives that have come through government or public and private combinations, there's corporates as well. So really, as many organisations as possible really coordinating. For example, some organisations will fund capital works, you know, really buying equipment and all that's needed for marine recovery, others will just fund revenue. So really, you know, having these organisations share information more, coordinate more on time in what they need, I think, will just prove a huge benefit to the marine environment, really. And I think that promotion of sharing and information and avoiding duplication is really key.
And similarly, really with the sustainable funding, blending public and private finance and funding into this area is critical, and to help that, that coordination is also critical, really. But providing training for practitioners, this is a complicated and reasonably new and novel area for many to get their heads around. When the different finance mechanisms, whether it's biodiversity credits, carbon credits, you know, impact investment corporates looking at the ESG areas, I think that that is quite difficult for some practitioners to get their head around, as well as trying to understand the marine environment, as well as trying to understand the stakeholders and government processes they need to go through.
And something I mentioned a couple of times, really, but bring it right down to the collaboration, the cross sector, the cross ecosystem. Collaboration across land and sea is really important, and really if funders can try and encourage that collaboration, I think, is also key. But avoiding that novelty for novelty sake, as it's put there, really, so not forcing partnerships for the sake of it, but focusing on the strategic rationale why collaboration and new partnerships are needed across again, that land sea divide, I think, is absolutely critical. And allowing time, really for this relationship building is important.
The last recommendation area is around exit strategy and legacy I said earlier about the importance of community, but also to allow real marine recovery over time. These projects or this funding needs to be considered for the longer term. You know, once funding is run out of a project and organisations leave, you know, how does one leave a legacy for communities to pick up so that they can take on the longevity of real marine recovery? So thinking about that community ownership and that stewardship post project, or built in early into the into project design, I think is, is absolutely one of the most important things. And I've mentioned about capacity building a number of times, and supporting training, informal learning routes, webinars, such as these or others, facilitating that peer to peer learning across diverse practitioners. Again, it's going to be really important to help with marine recovery.
So that was all I wanted to say, really on the recommendations. But just to finish this presentation, really on, I guess, some hope and the momentum, and I think there has clearly been shown through this research, through these conversations, that the movement for marine recovery is growing and gaining momentum. Conservation, restoration, advocacy, community-led action, whichever part of the myriad of areas that practitioners are involved in, governments involved in, they're all gaining momentum, really. And I think that has to be praised. And there's hope there, really the pioneering efforts we see, and across all the advocacy and marine habitat work is really important. And I think there's real efforts, real efforts to kind of shift the dial in and improve the basis and the hope for marine recovery. So that's what I'd like to say today. Thank you for listening, and I'll just stop sharing now.
Liam McAleese
Thank you. David Morven, over to you.
Esmée's reflections on the report
Morven Robertson
Thank you. I'm just going to share my screen as well. Great. Hopefully everyone can see that. So thanks, David, that was brilliant. Before I dive into the report and what we Esmée are considering, I just want to provide some information on us as a funder and how we work, in case some of you on here today are new to us.
We have a strong record and history of supporting work across the UK to protect and recover the marine environment. We understand the critical role of healthy seas to nature, people and climate. In recognition of this, our current strategy, which runs until 2027 has two priorities that have a marine focus, they're 'space for nature' and 'fishing in tandem with nature'. But the marine environment, as we all know, is connected to the whole world around us, and our other strategic priorities, such as freshwater, nature friendly farming, our work on climate change and our work with communities. So you can find information about our priorities and the work we're seeking to support as part of them on our website, and I'd encourage you to check it out.
Since launching our strategy, we've provided over £14m in funding for marine in the UK. So quite a significant amount, I guess, from a funder. That could be anything from advocacy to protect marine protected areas, tackling overfishing, supporting fisher-led and community-led initiatives, and driving greater action on diversity, equity and inclusion in the marine sector. We're really lucky to already work with so many brilliant organisations across the UK, many of you on here today working at different levels to effect change, we recently reviewed progress towards our strategy and identified seascapes as a key theme.
So as Liam and David have said, we commissioned this work to help us understand our role and how best we can support action around seascapes, but the report is for everyone. So if you're a funder, regulator, practitioner, community group, other, we really hope the insights and recommendations help to scale and inform better decisions and practice and culture around seascape restoration.
I thought I'd just say a little bit about our approach and our process. We're an open funder. You can apply to us at any time of the year through our website by submitting a simple expression of interest. Applicants follow a standard process, and we have a set of eligibility criteria. Again, you could check that out on our website. We're predominantly a core revenue cost funder, so we fund a lot of roles within organisations, and are usually committed to funding, you know, what we would consider is hopefully longer funding timescales. We don't tend to fund capital costs, that's important in this context, and thinking about partnerships. We don't typically fund research unless it's very applied or working through kind of programmes such as citizen science.
And we measure impact of work through what I consider quite a fairly light touch outcome and indicator framework that links to our strategy. So when we're thinking about what we're going to do with seascapes in the context of our own work, we're very much wanting to keep the process the same as what we already have. So please do have a look through that.
So yeah, key reflections from us, from the report, as you heard from David, the report is rich with insight. Bits will be more useful to some of you than other bits, and we're really hoping that it's useful for funders and practitioners. But just to emphasise, we're just one funder who have a specific focus to our work, and we don't have enough funding to take everything forward, and nor are we the right kind of funder for all of the work.
But definitely, you know the recommendation that funders need to work better together and work more collaboratively. We really hear that, and we agree. We know, as funders, we ask organisations and projects to be joined up and ask you to kind of work with others. You know, we need to be doing this a lot better, too. And the report calls for a funder network, potentially on seascapes, and that's something we're really keen to explore. So we've been reaching out to funders with this report, having one to one conversations, looking at ways we can be more collaborative and creative with the ways that we fund. So, for example, we don't really fund capital costs. Others do in this space. How can we be coming together and supporting projects to kind of deliver work?
And also, thinking about the stage we get involved with projects. You know, can we come in at an earlier stage? Can we take a more partnership approach with projects and organisations. So if you're a funder on this call, we're very keen to collaborate. So please reach out to us. I think the report also affirmed to us that we need to continue doing some of the work we already do. So we know there are lots of funders who want to fund action on the ground. We do this, but there's also a clear need from the report for more resource to enable systems thinking.
The report specifically highlighted a clear capacity and skills gap on policy and legislation. As a funder who funds a lot of this already, we're not surprised by this finding, and we know it's harder to fundraise for this, so we want to see more funders considering this when looking to support seascape projects and really wanting, I guess, to say to people out there who are building these projects and building your budgets, build this kind of skill in, and make sure you're bringing that expertise into the project. So we're really keen to look at gaps and ways that we can make sure projects have that kind of capacity when they're trying to do this kind of work. We were also, you know, interested to see the lack of join up that the report highlighted between land and sea. You know, many projects are kind of finishing their work at the shoreline. So how can we, who have priorities that span nature friendly farming, peat, freshwater, enable projects to be more joined up and integrated? And what does that look like for partnerships?
And as David said, I think we were quite surprised by the findings of the lack of consideration of climate in projects. It's an overwhelming topic even in our daily lives. But how do we encourage projects to start thinking about what, you know, the marine environment looks like in 100 years, instead of maybe what we should be restoring that was there 100 years ago. So we'd love to explore what this could look like. And you know, think about projects that would like to start taking that on and considering it.
And finally, the insights and recommendations on communities is something we're carefully considering. We know that for some organisations and funders, the focus will just be on nature restoration, i.e., we need to restore nature now. Why does it matter who does it? But we're not that funder. I'll say a little bit more about that when I get into the next steps.
Next steps: Esmée's plans
Morven Robertson
So what are we thinking about? We're considering work under three areas. I'm going to talk through them briefly, but just to re-emphasise, you know, we're an open funder. If you're doing anything that you think is relevant to this, please just reach out to us, and we've also been funding in this space for a long time, so we're fortunate that it's not a standing start. We'll be building on what we already do. As part of this work, we're considering lots of options, including whether we do an open call for applications. There are pros and cons of doing this. We're mindful of resources and time for organisations and reflecting on programmes where we've already done things like open calls, like through our Blue Spaces programme. We're also thinking about how we can work with others. Can we commission other organisations to take some of this forward, and can we work in partnership with them?
The first area's building sector capacity and tackling systemic barriers. So David and the report outlines very well that we need stronger joint working between seascape projects and greater support for collaboration to address systemic barriers, challenges such as complex licensing, fragmented governance, limited expertise and under-resourced organisations too often slow progress. So we want to build on our strengths and continue to commit to funding core costs that grow long term capacity, and also exploring ideas such as, how do we address the policy and skills gap? Could we fund a joint role that maybe works on behalf of a number of NGOs who are all facing the same problems such as water quality. Is this useful? Would this be annoying? We want to hear from you, you know, really tell us whether these ideas are on the right tracks.
We're also thinking about the value of a seascape network, which could maybe enable shared training, resourcing and support more collaborative initiatives. Could funding this be useful? And how do we maybe support some work that removes some of the silos. I think, you know, a bit of the reflection is, you know, marine restoration can be siloed even from people working on MPAs and fisheries, let alone, you know, freshwater. So how do we remove that and get us all working together?
The second area is place-based seascape restoration. We need much more of this work on the ground, and we need more capacity to do it. And we're really interested in supporting place-based projects that are taking a whole systems approach, given the links between farming, fisheries, freshwater and marine environments. We will prioritise work that explores these intersections and are led by partnerships across land and sea. We're really open to hearing from existing projects or even new partnerships and ideas, and if they're new, we're really mindful that people need space to test new ideas.
I think the report said people need as much as two years if they're starting from scratch, to really even just figure out what they're doing. And so we want to consider what that would look like for us and how we support them to take it forward into a delivery phase. And we also want to think about how we as funders can support and be involved in a discovery phase. And we're developing a set of criteria, which I won't go into too much detail on, but we're really keen, as I said, on projects that are joining land and sea.
We would like to support diverse partnerships. We don't want to force arranged marriages, get people working together who don't want to work together, but we're interested in partnerships that break down silos and bring in new and fresh perspectives.
We want inclusive, community-led projects. So we want projects that are co-designed with communities, with communities really involved in leadership and decision making, and we want to bring in new voices. What kind of partnerships can bring in underrepresented voices, particularly those who may be experiencing discrimination or face barriers to accessing nature but live right there next to the sea.
And as I said, climate change, I think we want to be thinking about what that looks like. And I think the report was really clear, you know, we're just one funder. The philanthropy sector is small in terms of our contribution to this. How can we leverage new funding and bring in others who have more to give? And all of this linking back to that kind of long term systemic change.
And finally, you know, we really want to continue and grow the work that we're doing to support coastal communities and community-led projects. We know communities are calling for fewer barriers and more funding for local projects. We already support some of these, mainly in Scotland, and many of these groups are keen to take on more responsibility and explore local governance models to manage the marine environment. So we're keen to kind of build on that. We're keen to convene communities and wider practitioners to have those kinds of conversations and then look at how we can take that forward.
We also are really aware of the fact that our own eligibility criteria means that many communities can't apply to us. So how can we work with others in partnership? Can we re-grant to organisations who can, and what does that look like?
I will end there and open it up for questions that I'm really excited about. But just to emphasise again, you know, we have not set anything in stone. We want to hear your feedback. We want to know whether you think we're on the right lines. If you're a funder, reach out to us. We want to work with you. If you're a practitioner, regulator, community member, other you know, we want to know how we can work with you. And you know, just thanks very much. On behalf of Esmée, to Pelagos and everyone on here for your time today. Thanks very much.
Q&A - questions are in bold
Liam McAleese
Thank you very much, Morven, and thank you. David, great to see some questions coming in, so please do put your questions in and up vote the ones that you'd like us to answer.
Top of the list is a question from Aine around how we can deal with the issues that numerous funders only want to fund active restoration, rather than passive natural restoration. I know that this came up in the discussions during the project. I just wondered, David first, the extent to which that came up in discussions, and more, then your perspective on that question, please.
David Tudor
Thanks, Liam, thanks for the question. Yeah, it does come up a lot. And I think, you know, I think I'm gonna be slightly careful to say that both these things are important. You know, there's a talk about active restoration and passive restoration, conservation, all of these terms thrown around. I think that true marine ecosystem recovery, we're going to need all of that. So I think the point being that to get real active marine restoration, you're going to need to tackle some of the pressures. You're going to need to work across the land sea divide. So the point is that a bigger and improved and more diversity around the type of funding is needed, really not at the exclusion of one area or rebalancing, just perhaps more on the policy now, because you need to level up where more the money is going towards active restoration at the moment.
Liam McAleese
Thanks, David. Morven what would you like to add to that?
Morven Robertson
I'd agree with that. And I think, you know, engaging with lots of funders, I can understand why it's more appealing to fund action on the ground. It's easier to report on. Sometimes there's nicer stories, if you can say we've restored X many oysters and restored X many hectares of sea grass. And you know, I think we need a bit of a cultural shift. And I think that means funders such as Esmée, who do fund some of the long term systemic change, that you might fund a policy officer tackling water quality for five years, and in five years, not much has changed, so understanding that change takes time, but also encouraging projects to show the true programme of work that it takes to deliver these projects. And you know, it's easy for me to say, but being brave enough to put that into budgets and have that conversation with funders to change that kind of willingness and practice.
Liam McAleese
Thank you. And on a related theme, I'm just going to go to Hannah's question around, when you're talking about seascape restoration and nature restoration, which habitats do you include? And then a separate question around, did you also include deep sea restoration in your research, and if not, do you as a Foundation plan to include it in the future. Who wants to start?
Morven Robertson
Good question. Sorry, David. Do you want to say something before I come in? So I think there is a big problem with everyone using different terms all the time. So I think we can be guilty of saying seascapes, and you know, we all define that differently. But I think seascapes is just a sexy word, really, for the whole system. I always think, you know, I think it includes everything. It's not about active restoration or really even restoring habitats. It's about everything, protection, pressure, removal, restoration. So I think that is recognising the connectedness of the system. I think, in David's work, and David can speak to it, he kind of included everything. But for us as a funder, you know, with the priorities that we have, many of which are on land, we are keen to focus on work that speaks to the connectedness of that system. So probably, with taking things forward, we haven't considered the kind of deep sea offshore environment as much but, you know, open to kind of hearing what that would look like, you know, if farmer practice that leads to changes at the coast that then improves salt marsh and sea grass, that then goes out into a deep sea environment, maybe involving some offshore wind farms. That's kind of taking the whole systems view. So keen to hear about it. And I don't think we're closed off to any ideas, really.
Liam McAleese
David, did you want to add to that,?
David Tudor
So I think the point around the seascapes is that it's about connectivity, as Morven mentioned, really. So what it's not trying to do is look at kind of single species or single habitats. It's trying to think about the connectivity across areas, across habitats, across land and sea.
Liam McAleese
I'm gonna move just to Peter's question, a very good one on monitoring. There's a lot of enthusiasm to establish nature restoration projects in a coastal and marine environment. However, there seems to be less attention to close scientific monitoring to establish whether these actions are successful and at an ecosystem level. And that link to the systemic as to how you're reducing human pressures to ensure long term success. How do you plan to address those? David first, in terms of whether you know how monitoring came up in the report, and that link to the wider pressures and systemic view, and then on to Morven.
David Tudor
Yes, it's a really good question, and where I considered it was quite often in this piece around longer funding. So for example, if one was to say, okay, I think 20 years or 15 years, or 10 years is the minimum requirement really, for these projects. And if you're a funder, how do you get some form of assurance, really, that the progress is really being made, or that the money is well spent in that recovery? So what I've said in the report really is the monitoring, and therefore the reporting really is critical, is absolutely critical when it comes to these longer term projects. So that's where perhaps some funders are great, because they're quite light touch. But then really, if we're looking for ecosystem recovery over long term, then I think the monitoring becomes ever more important. And I think funders, therefore need to think about how they can fund that, as well as the other good work that's going on, how they actually fund the monitoring to allow the true assessment if progress is being made.
Morven Robertson
Thank you. Completely hear projects frustration around you know, you start a project and you do it for a few years, and then you need to monitor it for the next 20 to really tell whether it worked. But many funders are saying, no, can you show us something new, please, and maybe somewhere else, in a different habitat we haven't heard about. So I think we know that's a big problem. And even at Esmée, you know, we would consider ourselves a funder that funds over a longer period of time. We're open to that three, five years longer, but that's not enough in this context. So I think, as David said, thinking about how we can create, you know, partnerships of projects over the long term. But I think, you know, organisations like Esmée, our funding is limited, and this is where we need governments and other kinds of sources, maybe through compensation, through offshore wind coming in, and really making that commitment to long term monitoring, because it needs to be done every year, and we really won't know whether it's worked for, you know, 20-50, years. So I think that is a problem. And again, kind of feeds into the culture around funding and, you know, making sure people understand we won't see results immediately.
Liam McAleese
Yeah, thank you. Jenny Wright's question around being in touch with the Coastal Partnership Network. I know we are in touch with the Coastal Partnership Network, but be good just to talk about the importance of supporting partnership networks. Morven, did you want to have a go at this one first? Yeah.
Morven Robertson
So as I said, we fund quite a lot on community-led work on marine in Scotland, where there's lots of organisations that are restoring marine habitats, advocating for better management and protection, and a lot of that work we have done through supporting the Coastal Community Network, which has just become its own organisation, which is really exciting after a long period of time developing. So I think we're really keen to support these kinds of partnerships and ensuring that communities are given a space to come together and learn from one another and get support. And we're really keen at Esmée to look at whether a similar model can work in England. What could that look like for Wales, Northern Ireland? So we are really keen, because I think it's through partnerships such as the Coastal Community Network that we can do more, because our eligibility criteria, you know, we know, is restrictive to individual community groups. So yeah, we are aware of other networks, and we're keen to hear from them, and think about how those are the kinds of groups I think we want to work in partnership with. And, you know, potentially looking at re-granting. There's also quite a few grants we have in our freshwater space where we've given a larger organisation funding that's ring fenced that then has to be re-granted to communities to allow them to do work in their areas. So there are lots of different models that we can look to and, you know, explore through this work.
Liam McAleese
Thanks, Morven. I'm going to throw in two now for David, first is Sahar's question around the extent to which it's possible to scale up the report findings to reflect the European and global picture. And also, where can we find guidance on recommended science for restoration, marine recovery? That's Olivia's question. I know that you mapped some, at least some of the active projects at the moment, if you could have a go at those two. David, please.
David Tudor
Yeah, sure. Thanks. Liam, on the first one, can it be scaled up for European, global scale? Absolutely. Obviously, there's going to be particular issues that are pertinent to the UK, particular structures, governance, organisations that are working in the UK. And obviously, Esmée Fairbairn is very much focused on the UK, hence why this report is focused on the UK. But lots of it, in fact, most of the principles within the report could apply, and do apply, really, globally and on the European scale, really. I think it's only the intricacies of certain legislation, the intricacies of governance that is really different, whereas the rest of it applies. You know, there's many projects in Europe and across the world that are, again, single habitat focused or aren't considering the more systemic issues. So it's a natural step, really, to certainly for Europe, I think. And then globally.
On the second question around where it can be found? Yes. So, there's two parts of this report, and the second part, and online, there is a resource which really shows some of the projects that are going on. But I think what's more important than that, actually is some of the work that's coming out of government and academia. So I mentioned earlier on around the ReMeMaRe initiative in led by the Environmental Agency. As part of that network, they've teamed up with all sorts of organisations to put out the suitability handbooks and guidebooks and guidance. There's similar activities going on in Wales and Scotland as well. So I think looking at those government agencies and some of the work coming out from academia is really important. But you'll find some reference to that in part two of the report, really, and some links to some of those initiatives, which will then further link you to elsewhere. So please look at that part one and particularly part two report in relation to this question.
Liam McAleese
Thank you, David. I'm going to go to Paul Turner-Smith's question next. In fact, you've both, Morven and David, have recently done a panel on the role of public or philanthropic funding for project planning that could seek other finance, private sector finance. And Thank you, Paul for noting without compromising community ownership and leadership, that's something that's very important to us. So be good, Morven, do you want to speak to Paul's question first?
Morven Robertson
So we're really keen to look at opportunities for blended finance partnerships. And I think often Esmée's role is coming in and providing catalytic funding. So we come in very early stage. We're happy to take on the risk of a project, support organisations to build a model, financial model, or build an idea and concept, with the intention that once a financial model is built and the kind of plan is put in place, that we then step back and other funders can take that forward. And we've done that really successfully on land. We're really keen to explore what that looks like in a marine context. So yeah, really keen to look at that. And I think that's a way that we can use our limited funding to leverage much greater levels of funding and work more collaboratively. So we definitely are very interested in that and exploring what that looks like in a seascape context. Yeah. I mean, often we're kind of coming in and de-risking that kind of project for other funding sources. So, yeah, lots of thoughts on that.
David Tudor
And I think just to add, really, I think the other part of Paul's question around without compromising the community ownership or leadership. I mean, I think that is quite nascent, that really, where, you know private finance is coming in, you know, to really kind of fund the project longer term. And you know that private finance is going to want some sort of return for that. You know, whether that's your local businesses creating income from something that's been helpfully created through the marine restoration project. You know, whether that's tourism or whatever it might be. So I think the answer to not having that compromise, really, is around the community being extremely involved with the private finance. You know, in other words, the project promoter from the start may have had some seed funding from philanthropy. Well, it's not them that needs to be having the discussion to the private finance. It needs the communities to be having the discussions with private finance, because they're the ones that are going to be continuing the work in the long term, really. So I think that bit is really important.
Liam McAleese
Thank you. I'm going to try and combine two questions now on fishing. So John has asked a question around, is there any communication / collaboration between fishing industries and restoration projects. And Bex's, not sure it's a question or a statement. We need to find ways of incentivising a long term reduction in fishing efforts. So just keen, just to draw out any reflections from the report and from our work at Esmée, Morven, on working with fishers.
Morven Robertson
Yeah, and I think when we think about seascape, we think big scale. And I think then communities, we've got to think about how they can continue to do the really incredible work that they're doing on the ground, which is often, you know, getting on with restoring and protecting nature on their doorstep. So thinking about models that allow communities and smaller projects to continue, but aggregating them into investable models, and I think supporting that process and not just losing it in the need for these things to be large projects run by one organisation. So also encouraging other funders to make sure community groups, some of which might be completely volunteer-led, make sure they are funded to do this work and have a seat at the table.
Yeah, so Esmée, we do, you know, really believe in the value of small scale fisheries and their fishing communities. We support work to, you know, enable fishers to become more involved in marine management and work in partnership with those restoring nature. I know that there are some projects across the UK that work with fishermen using their boats to restore marine habitats, using their boats to do some of the monitoring work, and I think we need to be increasing that and supporting fishers to be more engaged. But I do think the conversation around fisheries and protection of habitats remains quite siloed from, you know, one of the questions earlier asking about active restoration. So I think there's a lot more we can do. And I think when going back to the kinds of things Esmée is interested in supporting in a place-based approach, we want those kinds of partnerships. We want fishers, farmers, NGOs, communities, local councils, that kind of partnership all around the table, having conversations about how we can all work together. So those are the kinds of diverse and unusual partnerships we'd like to see, and making sure fishermen are centered in those because, you know, they're very important as stakeholders in the space.
Liam McAleese
Thanks, Morven. David, is anything additional you want to add in terms of what came out and in the report?
David Tudor
No, not really. Morven's covered it. Just to say, as Morven said, there are good examples of where the fisheries and the restoration goes hand in hand. And I think it's just critical that does continue.
Liam McAleese
So I'm going to go to, we've only got a few minutes left now, so I'm going to go to Sally's question around connectivity land to sea, this linkage is a bit of a black hole in terms of funding for restoration, which tends to be habitat and lower estuary and marine focused. However, this is really important. That's something certainly a very strong theme in the report. I just wanted to give you both an opportunity to bring that out again, and, you know, maybe some examples of what that might look like in practice.
David Tudor
Yeah, just very quickly for me. I think Sally is absolutely right, and the report said that, I think that the, you know, a good example recently is the marine condition assessment for the MPAs in Wales came out quite recently. You know, one of the major factors why some of those MPAs were failing their assessments was water quality, and therefore that you can see the kind of the land, sea interface, the interconnectivity being so critical to all of that. So, yeah, so from my point of view, very quickly, the consideration of the full spectrum from, you know, upstream, land, marine, riverine, estuarine and marine, then, is really critical. However, I would say it doesn't mean that every project under the sun has to do all of that. You know, somebody might want to do something on a particular system and not consider all of that is too big for them. So I think there's definitely a space for both. But I think that the interconnectivity across land and sea is really, really important.
Morven Robertson
Yeah, I think David, you explained it really well. And I think for us who have priorities that cross all of those areas, I think we're looking for how we can join up some of the work we're already doing and support those people to come together and start talking. So what could that look like? We've just started funding a project in Pembrokeshire led by the Pembrokeshire Coastal Forum, which is working with farmers and communities restoring rivers to improve agricultural practices and reduce pollution in rivers that then will lead to improved outcomes for the coastal marine environment. So the outcome and focus is kind of restoring the marine environment along Pembrokeshire Coast, but the actual action in partnership is upstream with others. So it's that kind of whole system connectivity piece that Esmée definitely is really interested in understanding. Are there more projects out there like that, and how can we support people, even just to come together and start talking about that and what kind of support they would need.
Liam McAleese
Now I don't want to try and do some of the other questions justice in the one or two minutes we have left. Hopefully. Jennifer Elliot's question around what examples of good projects in this space, we can answer quite quickly, David, because the report mapped, certainly in the UK context, all the projects that we, we have or signposts a lot of information to those projects, so plenty there to select from. Is that right?
David Tudor
Yeah, that's right. And, and since then, really, since this report was published, the Environment Agency have led a piece of work on a really kind of database for all of this going forward as well in perpetuity. So look out for that, I think is another key thing to look for. E
Liam McAleese
Thank you. Good. Well, look, we have about 30 seconds left. I'd like to thank all those who've submitted questions, some really good questions and thoughtful questions. Thank you, David for your work on this report. It's been great working with you. Thank you to the colleagues that participated and informed the report, and thank you also, Morven for your work on this and for your thoughts about where we currently are as Esmée on this. As Morven stressed, we are an open funder. Please do approach us if you have ideas and thoughts as to how to respond to some of the themes that have coming out of this report. We'd love to hear from you. You can get in contact with us via our website. That's the best way to engage with us. We will try and answer all the rest of the questions in the next few days, and put them up on our website, along with the transcript and the slides of the webinar. So I think that's it. Thanks so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Thank you very much.
Additional written Q&A
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