Proposed Act would avoid narrow focus on greenhouse gas emissions and promote action to preserve wider natural systems, argues think tank
The government should face legally binding targets to force environmental action in areas beyond carbon emissions, a leading think tank has announced today.
IPPR is calling for a Sustainable Economy Act to be introduced that would levy binding targets on governments, forcing action to tackle water pollution, improve soil fertility, and enhance biodiversity.
The new Act would be modelled on the 2008 Climate Change Act, which sets strict targets for emissions levels in five yearly increments, and requires the government to report on its progress. But the Sustainable Economy Act would apply this approach to tackling all aspects of environmental breakdown, IPPR stressed, including binding targets for a range of green issues.
"The Climate Change Act and the UK's target of net-zero decarbonisation by 2050 effectively places a greenhouse gas constraint on the economy," said Laurie Laybourn-Langton, IPPR associate fellow and the paper's lead author. "It is vital that similar constraints are extended to all the areas of environmental breakdown. A Sustainable Economy Act can do this."
Today's release follows the publication of a sweeping report from the left-leaning think tank into the climate crisis earlier this year, which warned that the combination of global warming, soil infertility, pollinator loss, chemical leaching, and ocean acidification is creating a "new domain of risk", which is hugely underestimated by policymakers, businesses, and investors, despite the epic scale of the threats faced by human civilisation. The report warned climate breakdown could cause a systemic collapse far greater and wider ranging than the 2008 financial crash.
As such it urged policymakers to grapple with these risks as a priority, introduce steps to accelerate the restoration of natural systems, and push harder to deliver a "Green New Deal" that could accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.
The think tank's new proposal for a new Sustainable Economy Act forms a central part of its suggested policy response to the threat. Alongside the new legislation, it wants to see a new Committee on Sustainability - a sister organisation to the Committee on Climate Change - established, and a new enforcement body introduced to hold the government to account on environmental regulations. The new body would have greater powers than the proposed Office of Environmental Protection (OEP) that the government plans to introduce post-Brexit, but which has faced fierce criticism from environmental groups for failing to fully replicate the enforcement powers enjoyed by EU bodies. The National Trust has today become the latest green body to call on the government to ensure the OEP is equipped with the "credibility, authority and resources" required to properly hold the government to account and ensure environmental standards are maintained.
IPPR, which is thought to be influential in Labour policy making, is also calling for "deeper changes to prevailing economic models", including a re-wiring of what it means to be prosperous in modern society.
Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who has promised to re-engineer the UK economy to focus on climate action, said the report was a "welcome contribution" to the debate on how to avoid environmental breakdown. "We urgently need collective action and a reimagined state, as the report points out, and we have to bear in mind the UK's historical and international responsibilities to tackle climate change," he said. "That's why equality, justice, and international solidarity - commitments discussed in this report - are at the heart of Labour's plans for a Green Industrial Revolution."
Today's report is the first of six planned discussion papers that will consider how to build a new social and economic model to mitigate and respond to the climate crisis, including by introducing "a full sustainability constraint on economies". "Living within environmental means would necessarily require deeper changes to prevailing economic models, including a new conception of abundance and living standards, rapid increases in green investment, and a leading role for the state and local communities," the paper suggests.
BusinessGreen approached Defra for comment on the proposals and was awaiting response as it went to press. The government has repeatedly pointed to its 25 Year Environment Plan as the primary mechanism for fulfilling its election promise to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.
Supporters of the government will also note that many of the proposals put forward by IPPR are embodied to varying degrees in the proposed Environment Bill, which is expected to provide the centrepiece of the next Queen's Speech. Ahead of his exit from Defra last week Environment Secretary Michael Gove provided a wide-ranging update on the government's plans for the Environment Bill, detailing proposals to incorporate new targets and strengthen governance structures.
However, campaign groups have warned the proposals are yet to be finalised and could yet be watered down by the new administration. The proposal comes as the government faces mounting public pressure to ensure the Environment Bill and accompanying Agriculture Bill set the foundations for a recovery in the UK's declining biodiversity. "There is so much more to do if we are to reverse the catastrophic decline in nature," head of the National Trust Hilary McGrady will tell new Defra Secretary Theresa Villiers at an event later today. "Action from the highest levels of government needs to start now."
Meanwhile, IPPR maintains a wider-ranging approach is required that more explicitly connects new environmental targets with the need for economic reform and sustainable development. The think tank argues mainstream political and policy debates have failed to recognise the critical nature of the environmental threat, nor its deep-rooted causes. Instead it insists only a step change in the structure and dynamic of the UK's socio-economic system, that reforms the way in which society measures health, wealth and happiness, will start to address the systemic issues fuelling the climate breakdown.
"Prevailing socioeconomic systems are divisive and degenerative," the paper reads. "They continue to drive critical levels of environmental breakdown without meeting human needs, have little recourse to the resultant injustices and are failing to adequately prepare for a destabilised future."
Recalibrating the UK's policy response to properly tackle environmental threats that could yet trigger civilisation level crises is no easy task. As IPPR points out, it will require breaking down vested interests and entrenched power structures, pushing through significant structural change, and winning buy-in from broad swathes of British society. But if the reforms were implemented, the UK could play host to a more sustainable and just societyand economy, better equipped to mitigate the causes of climate change and more resilient to the impacts of warming already locked in. The question is, is the UK's political class prepared for such a radical shift in thinking?
