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Tag Archives: Environment

Is the government’s response to the Dasgupta Review a watershed moment?

Posted on 18 June, 2021 by James Fotherby One comment

This post is by Paul Morling, principal economist at the RSPB, and James Fotherby of Green Alliance.

It is difficult not to see the government’s response to the Dasgupta Review, published this week, as a significant moment. In accepting two of the most fundamental arguments of the review: that nature is what ultimately sustains our economies and that reversing biodiversity loss is foundational to achieving a nature positive economy, the government has taken the first bold steps towards tackling the nature crisis.

Greening the economy

Protecting landscapes must be a collaboration of culture, heritage and nature interests

Posted on 17 June, 2021 by Green Alliance blog Leave a comment

This post is by Alison Barnes FRSA FLI, CEO New Forest National Park Authority.

As we think about and shape the future of protected landscapes, the role they play in the big issues of our time has rightly come to the fore. They are increasingly viewed as ‘engine rooms’ for a greener future focused on recovery of climate, nature and people, and imagined as nodes for an extended network of connected landscapes that could run as green veins across cities and the countryside alike.

Natural environment

The new Lords committee will bring new scrutiny to this decade of environment and climate change action

Posted on 21 April, 2021 by Green Alliance blog 2 comments

This post is by Baroness Parminter, the chair of the new Environment and Climate Change Committee.

We have begun a crucial decade. The environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change, and using the earth’s resources faster than they can be replenished, are well known. These will be the ten years that determine whether governments, industries and citizens can change direction in time to avert global climate and environmental disaster. The situation could not be more urgent.

Political leadership

Why George Monbiot is both right and wrong about ‘cold and alienating’ language

Posted on 7 March, 2019 by Jim Elliott One comment

This post also appears on the National Trust’s blog.

George Monbiot today wrote an excellent twitter thread criticising the ‘cold and alienating’ language we routinely use when talking about ‘the environment’. He specifically calls out a term we have been using at Green Alliance for several years: ‘Natural Infrastructure Schemes’. Monbiot argues that phrases like ‘our shared home’, ‘climate chaos’ and ‘wildlife’ should replace ‘the environment’, ‘climate change’ and ‘biodiversity’. Read more

Natural environment

The prime minister’s environment speech must herald a shift to restore nature

Posted on 10 January, 2018 by Amy Mount One comment

Tomorrow, Theresa May will deliver a major speech on the environment, it will be the first keynote environment speech delivered by a British prime minister since Tony Blair did so in 2000. David Cameron might have hugged huskies in the Arctic but, in practice, the environment as a whole was not a top priority for him (although he did address the UN on climate and gave a small speech on energy efficiency). Blair also delivered a major speech specifically on climate in 2004.

What does the election mean for the environment?

Posted on 19 June, 2017 by Shaun Spiers 4 comments

Following the election, Brexit, hard or soft, looks much more difficult. Among many other complications, the hung parliament will make it harder to agree the Great Repeal Bill. The purpose of the election (for the Daily Mail, at least) was to “crush the saboteurs”, ie anyone raising objections to the hardest of hard Brexits. Now the bill will be subject to intense scrutiny and possible amendment. Party political calculation and intra-party factionalism will have full rein. Read more

Political leadership

What are the manifestos promising on the environment?

Posted on 24 May, 2017 by Paul McNamee Leave a comment

Next Tuesday for the first time in this election campaign, the public will get the chance to put questions directly to the major parties on their ambitions and aims for the environment in the next parliament at the Greener UK Hustings.

The debate will include issues like air quality and pollution, nature protection, international leadership, farming and fisheries, climate change and, perhaps most pertinently, what the UK’s exit from the EU will mean for all of the above. Read more

Political leadership

What environment and development communities can learn from each other on achieving political impact

Posted on 12 May, 2017 by Matthew Spencer Leave a comment

This post is by Matthew Spencer, former director of Green Alliance and now Oxfam’s director of campaigns and policy.

Before the end of the first week of the UK election campaign, to widespread surprise, Theresa May agreed to the development sector’s main demand to maintain the UK’s 0.7 per cent overseas aid commitment. In contrast, the following week, the government had to be forced to publish its plan to reduce air pollution by a judge so fed up with its delaying tactics that he instructed ministers to ignore election purdah rules. The first decision helps people who live thousands of miles away, the other obstructs action to address something proven to be killing British voters. It should, therefore, be easier to get political leadership on environmental health than on international development, but the reverse appears to be true. Why? Read more

Political leadership

As we leave the EU we must plan for nature’s recovery

Posted on 20 February, 2017 by Green Alliance blog Leave a comment

This post is by Ali Plummer, wildlife law campaigner at The Wildlife Trusts.

Over the coming months and years, as the UK government begins the task of negotiating exit from the European Union, we have a rare and historical moment to ask ourselves – what kind of country do we want to live in? As the negotiations continue, there is the risk that these questions become lost in the seemingly abstract and inaccessible language of trade and commerce, and the moment is lost. But there is a way to recapture the moment: through considering our natural environment, whose fate – and by extension ours – is very much entwined with the future of our relationship with the EU. Read more

We must tell the truth to safeguard the environment

Posted on 1 February, 2017 by Green Alliance blog 9 comments

This post is by Lord Chris Smith, who was chair of the Environment Agency from 2008-14.

One of the most distressing things about the prospect of Brexit is the impact it could have on the range of environmental protections we currently have in Britain. Virtually every piece of safeguarding we have – of habitats, sea water and rivers, of air quality and against polluting emissions, of agricultural quality and cross boundary impacts – derives from European directives and common European policy. Many of these are already enshrined in UK law, of course, and the so-called Great Repeal Bill that will supposedly transpose everything into domestic legislation will, perhaps at the outset, ensure this.