Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/uk-seabed/

In many parts of the world, organizations, local communities, and governments work together to save the environment and biodiversity.

In the United Kingdom, however, those who want to help save its marine wildlife by restoring kelp forests and seagrass meadows must lease the area and pay fees to the Crown Estate before any projects can be carried out.

That is because Queen Elizabeth owns most of the country’s seabed, part of the vast wealth of the Royals that is being managed by the Crown Estate.

Crown Estate Manages More than $18 Billion Worth of Royal Assets

In 1066, after the military conquest of England, William the Conqueror claimed the entire country for the crown. Hence, all of the lands including the coastal waters became properties of the Royals.

In 1760, King George III and the Parliament struck a deal after the monarchy suffered a financial crisis. The king surrendered control over the crown assets in exchange for annual fees from them. The Crown Estate was established according to the agreement.

Today, the Crown Estate manages more than $18 billion worth of the Royal assets, collecting huge revenues from urban properties, especially in London, and the sale of seabed leases for offshore wind farms, cables, and pipelines.

And nothing is exempted, regardless of the nobility of a project’s purpose and its potential benefits to the constituents, environment, and future of the UK.

Crown Estate: A Hindrance to Nature Conservation Efforts

Swansea University’s Project Seagrass is one of the country’s foremost marine restoration efforts. But, according to Richard Unsworth, a marine ecology professor at the said university, they were astounded to find out that they have to pay the Queen for efforts to save the UK’s dying marine ecosystems.

Unsworth has come out with plans to replant 7,500 acres of seagrass in hundreds of sites around the country in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund and Sky Ocean Rescue. However, the program may not last long since the lease for a 2-hectare test site off the coast of Wales comes with a $3,100 fee as set by the Crown Estate.

Howard Gunstock, co-founder of Carbon Kapture, encountered similar problems while trying to obtain leases from the Crown Estate and permits from the government. After a year-long delay, he decided to relocate the organization’s kelp production projects to southeast Asia in order to avoid losing investors.

“The seabed is more than a cash cow for the Crown Estate and the Treasury,” remarked Luke Pollard, a Parliament member from the coastal city of Plymouth. “In the middle of a climate and ecological crisis, we need the Crown Estate to put nature and carbon on the same level as receipts for offshore activity.”

For the leaders of the liberal Green party, a possible solution to the problem is to replace the Crown Estate with a “green sovereign wealth fund.”

According to Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party politician and an economist, many people are astonished to learn that “environmental initiatives could be hamstrung by such “bizarre, medieval hangovers.”

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Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog