The UK has an unenviable title as one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. The Biodiversity Intactness Index has had the UK lagging well behind most countries for decades with, on average, only half of its biodiversity left, compared with the global average of 75%. The UK is in fact in the bottom 10% of countries globally.

The Index states that biodiversity loss is one of the starkest signs that we are facing a planetary nature crisis. This crisis isn’t really about losing the animals, birds, trees and plants that we love to see. This crisis is about the loss of the very natural fabric that underpins human society in the natural order of things. Protecting and restoring biodiversity and ecosystems shouldn’t only be the top priority of environmentalists, ocean NGOs, whale lovers and tree huggers, but instead that of economists, financiers, entrepreneurs and business leaders. Over half of the world’s GDP – USD$44 trillion – is threatened by this erosion of our natural world, and the accelerating collapse of ecosystems.

The world is currently descending into a culture war that is pitting economic growth against protecting nature. The environmental movement is being characterised as the blockers of growth, the impediment to a better future, an elitist group out of touch with the needs of people. This is particularly bizarre given that the movement is striving to protect not just nature but the very basic needs of all humans, as set out in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Access to food and clean water. Stable temperatures – not freezing or overheating. Good health – promoted by a thriving environment. These are all elevated and secured by protecting and restoring our natural world.

There has never been a more important time for the environmental movement to find a new narrative that shows that we aren’t blockers to human progress. That we are here to unlock a brighter future for humans. We need to be a generation that transforms the views of politicians, business leaders and the public to see that protecting ecosystems and wildlife is not optional – it’s compulsory.

As our seas continue to become the new frontier of resources exploitation and economic interest, we should take the cautionary tale of the woeful state of nature in the UK. How did it come to pass? What are the lessons that we can take from the collapse in biodiversity on land in particular?

This catastrophic biodiversity collapse has been driven over centuries by the intensification of farming, the conversion of wild land into cities, roads and airports, and much more on the densely populated islands that is the UK. Almost three quarters of our land is used for farming or the built environment. We have eradicated nature on an industrial scale – stripping our land and seas of wild animals, filling our landscapes with monocultures, stripping uplands of plants and trees through grazing, filling our rivers with chemicals, plastics and sewage.

We’re simply squeezing out nature. There is barely room for it to regain a proper foothold. What we see is often the mere remnants of what once was a landscape and seascape teeming with diverse wildlife and natural abundance.

As the world’s ocean opens up to more commercial interests, from aquaculture to ever larger commercial fishing trawlers, from Big Oil interests to deep sea mining prospectors, we need to learn from the stories of overexploitation. There is no more vivid example than what has happened in the UK.

This is why we must not let converging business interests squeeze out nature from our seas. The industrialisation of our seas cannot be at the expense of global ocean ecosystems. The implementation and enforcement of marine sanctuaries, free from extractive and polluting industries, must be guaranteed as the blue economy grows. These sanctuaries are vital to the ocean economy, regeneration zones for the ocean life and resources that billions of people rely on worldwide. They are also a buffer zone to the impacts of climate change. A healthy ocean is a resilient ocean.