Billionaire to invest in ocean protection as UK and US scale back funding | Science, Climate & Tech News

Michael Bloomberg has pledged $260m (£196m) to conserve the world’s oceans, as major funders including the US and UK scale back science and conservation budgets.

The investment is designed to “help close the gap between ocean protection commitments and action”, Bloomberg Philanthropies said as it disclosed the details to Sky News.

Leaders have pledged to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 but, with four years left, so far only 10% is protected.

It comes as countries like the US and the UK – the latter scrabbling to meet defence spending commitments – are trimming funding for climate, nature and science.

But it is also a critical time for oceans, which usually absorb 90% of the world’s heat and which are partly fuelling the current heatwave in Britain and Europe.

Bloomberg will channel some of the new funding towards enforcing the landmark High Seas Treaty, an international agreement to establish protected areas in international waters.

The pact came into effect in January after being ratified by the necessary 60 countries, but doubts remain about how it will be resourced and enforced in far-off, fish-rich waters.

“The High Seas Treaty shows that the world has the will to protect the ocean,” said Bloomberg, who amassed his fortune through his financial-data company Bloomberg LP.

“This investment will help ensure we have the way, by scaling up measures that have proven effective and focusing on some of the areas where we can make the biggest difference,” he told Sky News before unveiling the plans during London Climate Action Week on Tuesday.

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Last year, the philanthropist plugged the hole in the UN climate body’s (UNFCCC) budget after President Donald Trump withdrew US funding.

Now Bloomberg Philanthropies hopes to identify, establish and enforce the first protected areas under the High Seas Treaty.

Tom Brook, ocean conservation specialist at WWF, called it a “pivotal time for our ocean”, with the treaty creating an “unprecedented opportunity to protect the ocean at the scale it operates”.

It will also finance small coastal and island nations to participate in global negotiations on oceans – a group often drowned out in talks by richer countries.

The prime minister of low-lying Tonga in the South Pacific, Lord Fatafehi Fakafanua, said “stewardship [of the ocean] is a shared responsibility”.

He said the new money will give “island nations like Tonga a seat at the table”, as new maritime protections take shape.

Jane Fonda, actor and activist, said governments must “rise to meet” a moment when change is possible, and this additional funding “makes it harder for them to look away”.

Why UK has trimmed nature funding

Countries that have ratified the High Seas Treaty, which the UK is in the process of doing, are legally bound to support conservation and sustainable management of high‑seas biodiversity.

But the UK is planning to scale back its international environmental funding from £11.6bn to £9bn over the next five-year period, and is scrapping the rule that ring-fenced £3bn of that cash for nature, including coastlines.

Across the pond, President Trump has cut some ocean science, aid and environment programmes – though both countries remain in the top five aid donors globally.

Meanwhile the European Union is on a different tack, aiming to become the “global leader in ocean intelligence” via its new OceanEye project to monitor the seas, backed by €92m (£80m).

A UK government spokesperson said the “world has changed” and the government had reduced its aid budget (official Development Assistance or ODA) in order to “fund a necessary increase in defence spending”.

“However, our commitment to tackling climate change and nature loss has not changed,” remaining at 20% of its ODA budget over the spending review.

They added they were prioritising aid for “communities hardest hit by crisis, conflict and climate change, and fully protecting funding for Ukraine, Sudan and Palestine”.