Protest has always been at the heart of the environmental movement. In fact, the modern movement is just as much rooted in acts of civil disobedience, mass protest and speaking out against the status quo, as it is in scientific research, policy development and practical management.
Read more
When the UK’s first national citizens’ assembly on climate change was announced in 2019, no one could have imagined that its results would be revealed as the country was reeling from a health crisis and a huge shock to the economic system.
Read moreThis post is by Jill Rutter, senior fellow at the Institute for Government.
Much of the political debate around climate change has focused on the ambition of the target. Last year Theresa May upped the target laid down in the Climate Change Act, accepting the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC’s) assessment that the UK could reach net zero in 2050. In the election there was a competition over dates: Lib Dems offered 2045; Labour hinted at 2030. Extinction Rebellion want to eliminate all emissions by 2025.
Read moreThis post is by Agathe de Canson, policy assistant at Green Alliance, working in the Greener UK unit.
It has been a trade-heavy summer, with the government busy negotiating trade deals, the Department for International Trade reviewing the way it engages with stakeholders and rumours that former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott could get a top UK trade role.
This post is by Joe Dodd, vice chair of the Green Liberal Democrats.
After an initial decision to delay the Liberal Democrat leadership election for a year due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the party decided to go ahead with the contest under lockdown conditions. Since the party’s spokesperson for the climate emergency, Wera Hobhouse, MP pulled out, it has been a two horse race between the education spokesperson Layla Moran MP and the acting co-leader Sir Ed Davey MP. Read more
From the start of next year, the UK will no longer be bound by European Union laws or subject to the European Court of Justice. We will leave the single market and the customs union; replace the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy with national policies; and cease to be a member of the European Chemicals Agency.
The UK has already left the EU, but only when the transition period ends will we really be on our own. How are we doing? Will it be the green Brexit promised by ministers? Read more
The government has launched a recruitment campaign for the inaugural chair of the new independent environment watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP). This is without a doubt one of the most exciting jobs around in both the environmental and regulatory worlds and a significant milestone in the journey towards a new domestic environmental governance system. Read more
Having engaged with successive planning reforms during my time as chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), there is something comfortingly familiar about the white paper just published by the government. Many of the reforms I encountered in my first eight years in the job were swept away in 2012, when the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was introduced. Read more
This post is by Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network
Earlier this month the chancellor committed to deliver a green recovery with “concern for our environment at its heart”. He backed this up with a new £3 billion scheme to make homes, schools, and hospitals more energy efficient. This ambition is in tune with the public mood, as recent polling for the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) shows. Read more
This post is by Professor Maria Lee, co-director of the Centre for Law and the Environment at UCL, and Dr Carolyn Abbot, Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Manchester. Maria has been a member of the Greener UK Brexit Scenarios Group.
There are important stories to be told about the shaping of the Brexit debate by the environmental NGO community, and about the place of legal expertise in that debate. We have been exploring these stories Read more
