Angela Eagle has been given a great mission, here’s how she can deliver it

Dame Angela Eagle has been appointed the tenth environment secretary in a decade at a pivotal moment for the environment. She’s no stranger to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), having served as farming minister from September 2025 to June 2026 and as a junior minister in the late 1990s. She brings a wealth of ministerial and parliamentary experience which will be helpful in navigating cross government discussions and persuading colleagues to embrace the view of her permanent secretary that Defra is one of the most important departments in Whitehall. 

Like all new cabinet ministers, she will have a packed in-tray containing a mix of policies already in train, upcoming challenges, opportunities and political choices. Some of these are guaranteed to occupy her time due to their salience, especially water sector reform and the impending agreement with the EU on the trade and movement of animal and plant products. 

Where else should she focus her attention to improve the government’s delivery of its environmental goals to strengthen the UK’s economy, security and resilience?  

Here are three strategic themes we’d recommend she keeps top of mind as she navigates shopping lists of unfinished business and policy priorities: 

1. Nature recovery underpins our national security
As the national security assessment on global nature loss highlights, action to restore nature will also strengthen the UK’s security, prosperity and wellbeing. 

The Office for Environmental Protection has repeatedly pointed out that greater momentum is needed on the commitments of the Environmental Improvement Plan if the government’s legally binding environment targets are to be met, as well as protecting 30 per cent of land and sea for nature by 2030.

Another priority will be seeing through the farming transition. The farming budget settlement, Land Use Framework and 25 Year Farming Roadmap are a strong foundation for a more profitable, resilient and environmentally sustainable farming sector. Driving these forward, while maintaining confidence in the transition, will be a major challenge. Landscape Recovery schemes will assume even greater significance because they show benefits over a large scale; they could also be emblematic of the place-based delivery the new government says it wants to champion. 

In her recent stint at the Home Office, Angela was appointed as co-chair of a government taskforce advising on climate and nature threats to national security. She would do well to retain this brief in her new role, to ensure that her department’s efforts and contributions are fully recognised. 

2. Environmental protection underpins growth
Much of the first two years of this government was spent in futile debate about the perceived impossibility of protecting the environment while improving the economy and repeating the narrative that environmental protections block growth. Not only did this false dichotomy ignore evidence and damage important relationships, it also wasted crucial time that could have been spent on positive policy implementation. Angela Eagle must be firm with her cabinet colleagues that there should be no return to this damaging rhetoric which only undermines the pursuit of ‘win win’ outcomes for both nature and growth. For the economy and society to thrive, so must nature. 

The circular economy – one of her department’s most powerful secret weapons – appeared to be downgraded under the last months of the Starmer government. Improving resource productivity is one of the UK’s clearest opportunities to boost competitiveness, strengthen supply chain resilience and reduce costs for businesses and households, while delivering substantial environmental benefits. She must quickly retrieve the delayed Circular Economy Growth Plan, securing its swift publication. 

3. Social and environmental justice are inextricably linked
Angela Eagle naturally swings towards policies that are socially just as well as effective. She will have many opportunities to champion fairness and equity in her work. She could start in our towns and cities where polluted air is harming the poorest communities. Black and minority ethnic communities and those on low incomes are far more likely to be exposed, while contributing the least to causing it. That is exactly the kind of injustice that she should be tackling. 

Her department is the fulcrum in government for action on climate adaptation, putting her at the heart of cross-government efforts to tackle the impacts such as extreme heat, which also have a disproportionate impact on poorer communities. Committing to urban ‘greening’ as an integral part of the forthcoming England Trees Action Plan would help improve the lives of some of the 11 million people in England who live in ‘tree deserts’. 

Increasing public access to green and blue spaces is already a goal in the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan. However, statistics show this varies hugely across the country. Her department has already promised an access green paper this year. We’d like to see this fast tracked and a pledge that access to all the benefits of nature will no longer be a postcode lottery.