In post-Brexit trade plans it’s all talk and no action on the environment
This post is by Hatti Owens, ClientEarth UK environment lawyer
From the UK’s global carbon footprint to the quality of the products we import, trade deals have real world impacts on the environment. How the UK decides its future trade policy outside the protection of the European Union is of real importance.
With some politicians and groups – such as the Institute for Economic Affairs – calling for deregulation, environmentalists might, therefore, take heart from the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, which states that “environmental sustainability should be at the very heart of global production and trade”.
It’s a lovely sentiment, but unfortunately yet to be borne out by reality. Read more
This week, world leaders meeting at the COP in Katowice are under pressure to act on the IPCC’s recent warning that to limit global warming to 1.5°C requires “rapid and far-reaching systems transitions occurring during the coming one to two decades, in energy, land, urban, and industrial systems.” 
Greener UK
“As petroleum came to the relief of the whale,” said an 1878 promotional pamphlet for the world’s first industrial plastic, “so has celluloid given the elephant, the tortoise, and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts, and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer.” 
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Most of us don’t have to think too much about the food we eat, beyond “what on earth am I going to cook this evening?” We assume there will be food we want at an affordable price, and that, if it is on the shelf, it is safe to eat and has been produced to acceptable environmental and welfare standards. But the new trade relationships we negotiate after Brexit could present significant risks to the UK’s food system which could put an end to this confidence. 