The excessive complexity of national marine governance systems - Has this decreased in England since the introduction of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009?

With successive Government restructuring and the introduction of the Marine and Coastal Access Act in 2009, this paper revisits a previous set of organograms created in 2006 indicating the government departments with responsibilities relating to the marine and coastal environment in England in 2014. The 2009 Act presented an opportunity to harmonise marine management by simplifying the complexity in England through a radical restructuring of marine governance; however this is apparently not the case with many overlapping responsibilities still existing. This paper provides an overview of the 2009 Act, discussing some of the significant changes like the creation of the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), examines the current structure of marine management in England following its enactment and highlights the continued overlaps in jurisdiction, responsibilities and complexity of the government agencies with a marine remit. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Genome instability triggered by the V(D)J recombination by-product

A newly identified process by which mistargeted V(D)J recombination could cause genome instability in childhood leukemia has been discovered. In this mechanism, called cut-and-run, the excised DNA by-products of V(D)J recombination are re-bound by the recombinase proteins and erroneously trigger double-strand breaks at multiple locations throughout the genome. Many of these breakpoints co-localize with known chromosome alterations in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)

Integrating management tools and concepts to develop an estuarine planning support system: A case study of the Humber Estuary, Eastern England

© 2015. Estuaries are important because of their multiple uses and users which often makes them challenging to manage since management must strike a balance between the needs of users, the estuaries' ecological and economic value and the context of multiple legislative drivers. To facilitate management we have therefore developed an Estuarine Planning Support System (EPSS) framework using the Humber Estuary, Eastern England, as a case study which integrates the current legislation tools and concepts. This integrated EPSS framework is an improvement on previous approaches for assessing cumulative impacts as it takes into account legislative drivers, management tools and other mechanisms for controlling plans/projects specific to the estuary. It therefore enables managers and users to assess and address both the current state and the way in which a new industrial, port or urban development could impact an estuary in an accessible and understandable framework

Brexit: The marine governance horrendogram just got more horrendous!

On Thursday 23rd June 2016, the British people voted in a referendum on the following question: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ Of the 33,551,983 who voted, 51.9% (17,410,742) voted to leave (48.1% voted to remain). Although there is an agreed basic framework, as there is no precedent for a country leaving the European Union (EU), there is a lack of clarity surrounding the process and timetable for Brexit.1 The UK has to reformulate its relationship with the rest of the EU during a 2-year period triggered by the request to leave under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty (effective 2009). The start of that ‘divorce settlement’ is triggered by the Member State (the UK) and as yet (July 2016) the UK Government position is not to trigger Article 50 until their negotiating position has been defined internally. The 2-year period is separate to the ‘framework agreement’ with the rest of Europe which will take an undefined time to negotiate. The latter will be a reversal of the lengthy process of joining the EU to ensure alignment of the Member State laws with EU law, and could possibly take between 10 and 20 years. So what does all this mean for the future of the marine environment of a dominant maritime state such as the UK? Building on our previous work in the Marine Pollution Bulletin and elsewhere (Boyes and Elliott, 2014, 2015), we take the current legislation giving protection and management to the UK marine environment and consider how this could and should change depending on the exit scenario chosen and the impact this would have on UK marine environmental governance. We define governance here as the policies, politics, administration and legislation and reflect on the importance of the vertical hierarchy of legislative instruments from the local to the global (Elliott, 2014)

Marine legislation - the ultimate 'horrendogram': international law, European directives and national implementation

The EU is a pre-eminent player in sustainable development, adopting more than 200 pieces of legislation that have direct repercussions for marine environmental policy and management. Over five decades, measures have aimed to protect the marine environment by tackling the impact of human activities, but maritime affairs have been dealt with by separate sectoral policies without fully integrating all relevant sectors. Such compartmentalisation has resulted in a patchwork of EU legislation and resultant national legislation leading to a piecemeal approach to marine protection. These are superimposed on international obligations emanating from UN and other bodies and are presented here as complex ‘horrendograms’ showing the complexity across vertical governance. These horrendograms have surprised marine experts despite them acknowledging the many uses and users of the marine environment. Encouragingly since 2000, the evolution in EU policy has progressed to more holistic directives and here we give an overview of this change

Is existing legislation fit-for-purpose to achieve Good Environmental Status in European seas?

Recent additions to marine environmental legislation are usually designed to fill gaps in protection and management, build on existing practices or correct deficiencies in previous instruments. Article 13 of the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to develop a Programme of Measures (PoM) by 2015, to meet the objective of Good Environmental Status (GES) for their waters by 2020. This review explores key maritime-related policies with the aim to identify the opportunities and threats that they pose for the achievement of GES. It specifically examines how Member States have relied on and will integrate existing legislation and policies to implement their PoM and the potential opportunities and difficulties associated with this. Using case studies of three Member States, other external impediments to achieving GES are discussed including uses and users of the marine environment who are not governed by the MSFD, and gives recommendations for overcoming barriers

Using critical thinking to conduct effective searches of online resources

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