Organised by The Wildlife Trusts, National Marine Week actually spans two weeks. This year’s theme is ‘Sea’ the Connection. It runs from July 27 to August 11. It is deliberately timed to coincide with the school summer holidays to encourage individuals and families to explore the rich diversity of marine life and to help raise awareness about marine conservation.

The ecological importance of marine life

The UK’s marine environment is incredibly diverse, hosting an array of ecosystems ranging from rocky shores and sandy beaches to deep-sea habitats. These ecosystems contribute to:

• Nutrient cycling – the breaking down of organic material and recycling nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

• Carbon sequestration – absorbing about 25% of the CO2 emitted by human activities.

• Oxygen production – marine phytoplankton are responsible for producing roughly 50% of the Earth’s oxygen.

They also support a wide variety of species, including marine plants, plankton, countless invertebrates, fish, seals, dolphins, whales, and seabirds. These species, whether they are predators, prey, or decomposers, each play an important role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. 

This biodiversity is crucial for the stability and resilience of marine ecosystems. The removal or decline of one species can have cascading effects throughout the marine environment.

Challenges facing our seas

Despite the beauty and importance of marine ecosystems, they are under threat from human activities. Plastic pollution is one of the most visible issues, with millions of tonnes of plastic waste entering the oceans each year. This pollution harms marine life, damages habitats, and can even enter the human food chain.

Overfishing is another critical problem, leading to the depletion of key species and the disruption of the marine food chain. Additionally, climate change is causing ocean temperatures to rise and increasing acidification, both of which have profound impacts on marine biodiversity.

Marine conservation

In the UK efforts to protect marine life include the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and sustainable fishing practices. The UK employs quota systems, gear restrictions, and seasonal closures to prevent overfishing and promote stock recovery. However, despite this UK fish stocks are still in a deeply troubling state.

Other efforts include pollution control measures, and public awareness campaigns. These initiatives aim to safeguard marine biodiversity and ensure the health of marine ecosystems.

Get involved in National Marine Week 

Events and activities

There are a range of events during National Marine Week that you can get involved in. These include guided rock pooling sessions, organised beach cleans, educational talks, snorkelling adventures, and boat trips to name just a few. The Wildlife Trusts and other participating organisations provide resources and expertise, making these events accessible and informative for all ages.

Use the interactive Wildlife Trusts map to find an event near you. 

Contribute to science

One of the highlights of National Marine Week is the chance to participate in public science projects. These projects encourage individuals to contribute to real scientific research by recording sightings of marine animals, monitoring beach litter, and helping with habitat restoration efforts.

Take action

Everyone can play a part in protecting marine environments, and not just during National Marine Week, although it is the perfect time to start. 

Simple actions such as reducing plastic use, supporting sustainable seafood choices, and participating in local beach cleans can make a significant difference. Additionally, staying informed about marine issues and supporting policies that promote ocean conservation are crucial steps towards ensuring the health of UK seas.

Written by © Anne Baker

Photo Credit: © Anne Baker, kindly reproduced here with permissions for the 2024 GPW committee

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Plastic Free July is an initiative by the Plastic Free Foundation and is a worldwide movement, where millions of people join in to be part of the solution to plastic pollution.

Green Party Women #PlasticFreeJuly Top Eco Tips

Throughout the month we have been be sharing resources to support the campaign. We have also been highlighting alternatives to plastics on our social media (X and Facebook).

We have been sharing our own #PlasticFree top eco tips. Some of our members and supporters have been sharing theirs with us too. Below is a selection of those we have highlighted so far.

Do you have a tip of your own that you would like to share with us? If so, email us at info@greenpartywomen.org.uk  with subject title #PlasticFreeJuly, and we will share your tip too.

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Conference voted unanimously to fully support the Truth About Zane Campaign’s call for ‘Zane’s Law’. Well done to everyone who has campaigned for this for such a long time

GPEW proposes that the following measures be adopted into legislation by Government, to prioritise the protection and safety of people and planet.

The Legislation if passed would include:

1.    Each relevant Local Authority must keep a full, regularly updated Register of Land that may be contaminated within their boundary.

2.    The Environment Agency must keep a full, public ‘National Register of Contaminated Land’ to be regularly updated by information from Local Authorities.

3.    All above mentioned Registers of Land must be accessible and available for inspection by the General Public.

4.    Relevant Local Authorities must fully inspect any land registered that may be contaminated and must fully remediate or enforce remediation of any land which poses harm to public safety, or which pollutes controlled waters*

5.    Relevant Local Authorities must be responsible for inspecting previously closed landfill sites and fully remediating them, or enforcing their remediation when they pose a risk of significant harm to people or controlled waters.

6.    The Government must take full responsibility for providing the necessary funds for Local Authorities to meet these new requirements, following the ‘polluter pays’ principle: to recover costs as appropriate where those responsible for the pollution can be identified.

These measures are not all in place currently and would require significant investment and full funding from the Government to be implemented. Other statutory requirements (such as data protection provisions) would need be taken account of.

* Controlled waters are groundwater or surface water intended for human consumption

Truth About Zane article written for Green Party Women website by Elizabeth Mansfield – Lewes District Green Party, Truth About Zane Campaign Committee, GPW Committee Co-chair.

I’m so pleased to have been invited to write about the Truth About Zane (TAZ) Campaign for the Green Party Women (GPW) website. One of GPW’s key aims this year is raising women’s voices. Excellent. I’m raising my voice for Zane.

Truth! Justice! No More Deaths from Toxic Waste! Three urgent demands we’re crying out to be heard in the name of Zane Gbangbola, son of Kye and Nicole, who died in February 2014, when he was only 7-years-old, during terrible flooding at his home in Chertsey, Surrey.

Yet it wasn’t floodwater that carried this much-loved little boy away, but Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) poisoning, detected at high levels in his home by the HAZMAT Fire and Rescue team on the night he died. His Daddy, Kye, is now  a rest-of-his-life wheelchair user, with a diagnosis of ‘Rhabdomyolysis due to Hydrogen Cyanide’, from the same incident – a diagnosis made by his Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist.

So, why at Zane’s Inquest, held two years after his death, did the coroner find that Zane died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty petrol pump? Good question. The Fire and Rescue team did find a petrol pump at Zane’s home that night, but they logged it in the National Incident Recording System as having been found ‘cold and unused’. They had also tested for Carbon Monoxide (CO), but none was detected, which fact they also logged.

Despite this clear evidence, on the morning after Zane died, the police publicly announced that CO poisoning from a faulty petrol pump was the most likely cause of Zane’s death. The announcement came hard on the heels of an urgently called emergency COBRA meeting, and before any investigation had begun.

The CO/ faulty pump theory continued, unswervingly, to be the authorities’ official ‘line’ right the way through to the coroner’s verdict, given in 2016, which confirmed the same. Kye and Nicole (Zane’s Mummy) were not listened to when they repeatedly said that they had not used the petrol pump, that it was faulty (a fact confirmed by the coroner’s own pump expert at the inquest) and that they’d only hired it as a back-up. Their statements were ignored, and they were accused of lying. Worse still, the implication that they were ’negligent parents’ was stuck on them. Disgraceful! Nothing could have been further from the truth.

More and more evidence has since emerged that the land next to Zane’s home was a historic landfill site, and that the land is contaminated. Post-war, it was commandeered by the MOD for amphibious tank testing (munitions), and in the 1960s thousands of tons of experimental waste were dumped there.

Kye and Nicole also discovered, shockingly, that the local authority knew all this, and that four years before Zane died, they’d advised the Environment Agency to put a gas proof membrane into a new property they were building, right next door to Zane’s home. The gas proof membrane was recommended following a report made from a desk top study, assessing the land, which had concluded that the land posed an ‘Unacceptable risk’ with a ‘high risk of migrating landfill gasses’, capable of causing ‘significant harm, serious injury and capable of causing death.’  The local authority kept quiet about the report, refused to test the land further, which had been strongly recommended, and failed to inform local residents that they were at risk. Now, that does sound like negligence!

None of this crucial evidence, however, was heard at Zane’s inquest. The coroner had determined that Zane’s death did not touch on ‘matters of public interest’ and therefore did not warrant an Article 2 type inquest, which would have required a jury, and would have put the verdict on Zane’s death into the jury’s hands. By making this decision, he awarded himself, as coroner, absolute power to determine which evidence was heard at the inquest and which was not. There was zero ‘parity of arms’. Kye and Nicole were denied legal aid three times in the period leading up to the inquest, while all other parties were represented by top QCs, including the coroner himself.

The Fire Brigade Union have stood solidly next to Kye, Nicole, and the TAZ Campaign, questioning the coroner’s verdict and calling for a full and fearless Independent Panel Inquiry to determine the truth of what happened to Zane. So have many other organisations and political parties, including the Green Party, trade unions and thousands of individuals. Our petition calling for an Independent Panel Inquiry for Zane, was delivered by Kye and Nicole, together with Matt Wrack (then General Secretary of the FBU), to No.10 Downing Street, in October 2022, on what would have been Zane’s 16^th birthday. The petition, signed by over 117,000 people, has been completely ignored by the government.

Andy Burnham’s (Mayor of Manchester) ‘Hillsborough Law’, now the ‘Public Authority Accountability Bill’, would reform coronial law, preventing the cruel injustices that have been perpetrated on the Hillsborough families, and now on Zane’s family. The Bill is still waiting to be passed into law. We can only hope that if Sir Keir Starmer becomes PM at the next election, he will do the right thing at last – speed the passage of this Bill and immediately grant an IPI to uncover the truth about Zane and the landfill next to his home.

No More Deaths from Toxic Waste!

Natalie Bennett has been supporting TAZ since I invited her to meet Kye and Nicole in 2016. She’s attended many events we’ve organised since then, including one she arranged herself, at the House of Lords. At Cop 26, together with Kye and Nicole, Natalie launched a new branch of the TAZ campaign ‘Zane’s Law’, at a Peace and Justice event hosted by Jeremy Corbyn.

‘Zane’s Law’ aims to close loopholes in the Environment Act 2012, by tightening up authorities’ obligations in relation to the registration and remediation of landfill sites and public health safety. And the law would require the government to provide the necessary funding and resources, following the polluter pays principle, to enable this work to be carried out. Zane’s law would be the first progressive UK law in decades to provide enforceable protection for local communities endangered or harmed by toxic landfill and polluted waters: A law to protect our children now, and in the future, from the dangers of contaminated land.

I tabled a motion to define and support ‘Zane’s Law’ for the October 2023 GPEW conference. The motion made it onto the agenda but wasn’t debated. However, I succeeded in getting the ‘Campaigns Committee’ on board, who have been immensely supportive in helping to promote ‘Zane’s Law’ as a GPEW national campaign. We created a resources pack, a dedicated website, and I set up a ‘Make Toxic Landfills Safe’ petition. Tom Scott’s support (chair of the committee) was especially invaluable. We included the as yet unheard ‘Zane’s Law’ conference motion in the resources pack, as a ‘model motion’ for campaigners/councillors to present to their local councils.

In Lewes, where I live, 17 Green councillors form the majority on Lewes’s Tory-free District Council. With the resources pack now launched, and the website and petition live, my friend and colleague, Councillor Imogen Makepeace* (see note at end of article), took the motion forward and it was included for debate at a full Lewes District Council meeting on Monday 19^th February.

Kye travelled to Lewes to be with us for this momentous occasion. Imogen spoke brilliantly, the motion was carried unanimously, and a standing ovation from all the other councillors followed… it was a very emotional moment I can tell you!

Since then, four more councils have passed the motion and hopefully there’ll be more to come. Special tribute to Green Cllr Kerry Pickett at Brighton & Hove City Council, Green Cllr Gabe Crisp at Adur Council, Green Cllr Rebecca Aldham at Stroud Council and Green Cllr Polly Gray at Rother District Council. Thank you!

Since I launched the petition, which now has over 3,500 signatories, people with concerns about contaminated land and water have been getting in touch with TAZ, rather like the postmistresses and masters who came forward when Mr Bates put out a call to them, during the Post Office Scandal. As a result of this, Kye has recently launched l ‘UK Landfill Campaigns’, a supportive network and resource for campaigners, through which people can connect, learn, and empower each other. Together we are stronger!

I’ve known Kye and Nicole for over 10 years now. I was living not far away from them at the time of the tragedy, and I also experienced that terrible flooding in 2014. I met them at a huge ‘post flood’ meeting held at the Spelthorne Leisure Centre, in Staines, and it was here that I first heard the shocking news of what had happened to Zane. I’ve come to know, love, respect and admire them both. They are amazing people, whose love for their beloved son blazes through them as strongly as does their grief and despair at his loss. They are fearless, brave, courageous campaigners, who will not rest until Zane has the justice he deserves, and until UK landfills and water supplies are made safe for people, for our environment, and for our beautiful planet.

Little Zane had helped to set up an ‘Eco Team’ at his school. And when he was asked about why sustainability is important, he carefully explained how much he and his family liked to look after their own garden… but that the world is one big garden and that we’re all responsible for looking after it together.

Rest in peace Zane, we heed your words.

What can you do?

Find out more about the Truth About Zane here: www.truthaboutzane.com

Find out about Zane’s Law here: www.zaneslaw.co.uk

Sign the petition here: Make toxic landfills safe – Support ‘Zane’s Law’! | 38 Degrees

Help get my Zane’s Law motion onto the agenda for the upcoming September conference, by clicking ‘Like’ (at the bottom of the motion) on Green Spaces here: spaces.greenparty.org.uk/content/perma?id=230661

• Find out about and connect with any local campaigns about landfill and/or contaminated water in your area and connect with the ‘UK Landfill Campaigns’ network by emailing truthaboutzane@gmail.com.
• Bring up the ‘Truth About Zane’ and ‘Zane’s Law’ in your local party. You could suggest a showing of these excellent films, with a discussion to follow:
• If you have a Green Councillor, talk to them about getting the model motion put forward at a council meeting. The Zane’s Law resources pack, including the model motion, is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Vv0c1vef0LhhmZXutFH2j-_PIqhzlgm/view?usp=sharing

Further information

Kye Gbangbola speaking about the need for Zane’s Law – (3.5 mins)

Paul Mobbs – Forgotten but not Gone: Contaminated land, climate change and government inaction (18 mins)

The Truth About Zane – a film (11 minutes)

*Imogen Makepeace

Not long after that victorious night, when Imogen successfully moved the first ‘Zane’s Law’ motion ever to be passed by a local Council, she was put on a ‘No Fault Suspension’ by the Deputy Chairs of the Disciplinary Committee, on what I consider to be spurious grounds. As a result, Imogen has now resigned from the Green Party. This has been a huge loss to our local party. We have been very upset and we rallied to support her at an EGM. Imogen’s ‘No Fault Suspension’ is, again in my opinion, an indictment of the Green Party’s disciplinary processes, which have been much used and abused of late. The Green Party’s loss, however, is Lewes’s gain – Imogen Makepeace was elected Mayor of Lewes on Thursday 9^th May.

The post Zane’s Law appeared first on Green Party Women.

Ella Roberta was a funny, busy, clever, curious, sporty and musical child. She was born in Lewisham Hospital and was a healthy, young girl until just before her 7th birthday she began to develop, what was later confirmed at her inquest, rare and life threatening asthma.

The inquest into the cause of her death at 9 years old has concluded with the ruling that dangerously high levels of air pollution in London made a “material contribution” and will be recorded as a medical cause of her death in 2013.

The inquest was possible thanks to the extraordinary campaign led by Ella’s mum, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, now a World Health Organisation advocate for health and air quality. Rosamund set up the Ella Roberta Family Foundation after the death of her beloved daughter. The aim of the foundation is to improve the lives of children affected by asthma in South East London by raising awareness of asthma, campaigning for better treatment and for clean air.

Rosamund is featured in the Women’s Hour Power list. Listen to the interview.

Green Party Women April 2020 Conference on Air Pollution and Covid

Rosamund and researchers from the Cambridge University Toxicology department spoke about Air Pollution and Covid at the conference.

Extract of Rebeka Popovic and Dr. Lisa Selly on Air Pollution & Raised Covid-19 Infection Risk

“We explored potential links between the major air pollutants that are released during fossil fuel combustion and COVID-19 in England. Looking at the effects on both population and individuals, we showed that the levels of some air pollutants are linked to the risk of being infected as well as chances of dying from COVID-19. We also identified which sources were contributing most to levels of these air pollutants in England. Our results emphasise the importance of strengthening efforts to tighten air pollution regulations”

Rebeka Popovic is a PhD student at the MRC Toxicology Unit. Her research explores why and how air pollutants cause harm to the body, focusing on the biological changes that they create in the lungs as well as their role in promoting airway infections.

Liza’s projects are based on pollutants that currently have little or no government regulation. These include non-exhaust traffic emissions like brake dust, biodiesel exhaust and aviation emissions

View the full presentations.

Some short extracts from Rosamund are here:
How Many Die From Air Pollution
I Knew Air Was Filthy
Why So Many BAME Deaths
Why So Many Bus Drivers Die From Air Pollution.

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