The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs recently ran a consultation inviting expert input to determine how United Kingdom (UK) policymakers would be guided by five internationally recognised environmental principles when making policy affecting the environment. The principles are listed in a draft of the Policy Statement on Environmental Principles, a ground-breaking novelty of the Environment Bill – which recently passed through the UK Parliament. This article comments on this promising development with a focus on its implications for the development and implementation of policies for the protection of the marine environment. It advances that, while there is a lot of promise in the Bill creating a legally binding duty on Ministers across Whitehall to have due regard to the Statement while developing high-level strategic policies around marine environmental protection, it seems to exclude local authorities who are in charge of developing Marine Plans within the existing UK marine planning framework. This omission is problematic as it fails to recognise the crucial role which these authorities play in the actual delivery of nationally-developed high-level marine environmental protection policies and consequently weakens Her Majesty’s Government’s status as a global leader in this space.

环境、食品和农村事务部最近进行了一次咨询，邀请专家提供意见，以确定英国 (UK) 决策者在制定影响环境的政策时将如何以五项国际公认的环境原则为指导。这些原则列在环境原则政策声明草案中，这是环境法案的一项开创性创新，最近通过了英国议会。本文评论了这一有希望的发展，重点是其对制定和实施保护海洋环境政策的影响。它提出，虽然该法案中有很多承诺，为白厅各地的部长制定了一项具有法律约束力的义务，在制定围绕海洋环境保护的高级战略政策时适当考虑该声明，但似乎排除了负责发展的地方当局现有英国海洋规划框架内的海洋规划。这种遗漏是有问题的，因为它没有认识到这些当局在实际执行国家制定的高级别海洋环境保护政策方面发挥的关键作用，从而削弱了女王陛下政府作为该领域全球领导者的地位。