Oceana UK — Seahorse Environmental (2024)

Making ocean protection a cross-party priority

Oceana UK

The Seahorse Environmental team are a pleasure to work with and bring incredible expertise, insights, and support to our environmental campaigns to drive progressive policy change to protect people and planet. From strategy support to targeted conversations with policymakers, they are always on the pulse of politics, public opinion, and the media appetite for sustainability campaigns. Their policy advice and political sense is second to none. Highly networked – they’ll always get you into the right conversations and rooms.

Hugo Tagholm, Executive Director, Oceana

Context

The UK is an island nation, surrounded by sea. We rely on a healthy ocean to support us. However, fish stocks are in collapse, marine ecosystems are at risk from destructive fishing practices and oil and gas exploration, and carbon is being unlocked from the seabed at a rapid rate.

While the UK Government has made some positive progress, policies like MPAs and fisheries management plans are weak. There is slow progress to advance them, low public awareness of marine issues, and the Labour Party has demonstrated little political interest or ambition on ocean protection.

To put oceans on the agenda of all Parties, we were tasked by Oceana UK to raise awareness of its 3 main campaign asks and build Oceana UK’s relationships across government, Shadow Government, Parliament, and the broader sector.

Our activity

Supported the publication and mailout of the Manifesto for UK Seas.

Produced a comprehensive political strategy for Oceana UK’s campaigns, holding a strategy workshop to identify opportunities spanning political engagement, thought leadership, and public activity, assess relationships and determine core objectives and priorities. We are currently continuing to support on the delivery of this strategy in 2024.

Launched Oceana UK at Labour Party Conference, securing top level speakers including the Shadow Minister for Oceans and Coastal Communities, managing the launch event, briefing them and handling all logistics.

Supported regular briefing and engagement with key Shadow Ministerial teams, advisers, and Parliamentarians.

Our impact

Putting critical issues on the political agenda. Through this work, we have increased the prominence of marine conservation within the Labour party. We built a strong relationship between our client and Labour, and facilitated front bench and adviser engagement on ocean issues (previously absent), Oceana UK is now seen as a trusted source of expertise for these teams, and has helped to convene sector engagement with Labour to help build the knowledge of a new Shadow Defra team at a crucial time in the political calendar.

Regular engagement and briefings has also helped strengthened Oceana UK’s connections with parliamentarians and advocates, enabling them to secure parliamentary questions and meetings on core campaign areas. These meetings have been supported by the Manifesto for UK Seas which, nearly a year later, continues to be a vital piece of collateral.