Published on 4 August 2026
Siobhan Vye (project lead) – National Trust
Claire Collins (project lead) – National Trust
David Bavin – National Trust
Sicily Fiennes – National Trust
Bryony Aitchison – National Trust
Matthew Heard – National Trust
Sarah Crowley – University of Exeter
This mission is steered by an advisory group including Dr Emma Dade from Natural England, Dr Emma McKinley from Cardiff University and Professor Bill Sutherland from University of Cambridge.
ExCASES missions provide short, intense periods of focus towards issues communicated as priorities for RENEW partner organisations and external stakeholders. The ExCASES team work collaboratively with people across different sectors and disciplines, co-designing research and participatory processes to generate empowering outcomes for people and the environment.
This mission aims to identify and prioritise emerging issues that have the potential to impact the marine environment and its ability to deliver ecological, climate, social and economic outcomes over the next 25 years.
Prioritising conservation and management actions is key to maximise conservation outcomes and support progress towards targets in a challenging legislative and financial landscape. Forecasting future issues, particularly ones that will challenge decision makers to meet national and international biodiversity targets, can facilitate preparatory action, potentially reducing challenges and maximising opportunities for future marine recovery.
To date, there has been no focused horizon scan exercise for the UK coastal and marine environment. A horizon scan would be timely, as the coming decades present some major challenges for the UK coastal and marine sector to adapt to while moving towards their national and international biodiversity targets. A horizon scan that has the scope to identify people-in-nature issues intertwined with environmental changes is crucial to ensure relevant forthcoming issues are identified and can be prioritised for future research and funding.
This ExCASES mission is conducting a horizon scan exercise with key experts in the UK marine and coastal sector, asking the following broad question:
The expert panel will identify issues, then prioritise them through multiple rounds of scoring. The final product will be a list of top issues for the next 25 years.
We hope that the outcomes of the horizon scan will provide a holistic view of the future challenges and opportunities the UK marine environment faces. We plan to publish an academic paper, as well as disseminating the findings though RENEW & partner communications.
Mission outputs will be linked here when published.
