More than a third of the UK’s population live within 3km (1.9 miles) of the coastline, Lovell noted.

“We need a concerted effort to better protect coastal communities and economies while enhancing the marine environment.” “We need to work together with coastal communities to identify the best possible way to keep them safe and prosperous,” he said. The Environment Agency chair, Alan Lovell, on a visit to the Ipswich tidal barrier in November. Alan Lovell, chair of the Environment Agency, told the Coastal Futures conference on Thursday morning that coastal towns were among the most deprived in the UK.

About 85% of England’s salt marshes, a major carbon store, have been lost since the 1800s, along with about half of seagrass meadows and 95% of the native oyster population.Īdded to this, many people in coastal regions are enduring economic hardship. Sand dunes were being lost to erosion, and wetlands were drying out under the influence of the climate crisis, the report found. The report found that there had been “widespread damage to coastal defences, properties and infrastructure” during storms, with about 100,000 people at risk of significant coastal flooding. Nitrogen pollution comes from agricultural runoff and sewage, and can cause harmful algae blooms that kill off marine life and smother seagrass and saltmarsh. More than nine in 10 of the estuaries sampled had nitrogen levels that were too high in 2019, as did nearly half of coastal waters. Only 45% of the marine areas assessed met the standard in 2021, according to the report, published on Thursday. The EA report paints a bleak picture of England’s coastal regions, with fewer than a fifth of the UK’s estuaries judged to be at good ecological status. A report published last week found that dredging was unlikely to be the cause of the die-offs, suggesting an unidentified new pathogen could have been to blame, but the findings have been criticised by some scientists. Dredging and pollution have come under increasing scrutiny, after a mysterious big die-off of crabs and lobsters was recorded around Teesside on the north-east coast in the autumn of 2021.

East coast cook dredging jobs