Thank you: the stage is set for a new Environment Act

At WWT, we’re campaigning for a new Environment Act as part of a strong 25 year environment plan. In our Nature’s Way report, we recommended that an Act should:

  1. Set clear, legally-binding objectives: for wildlife, water, air and natural assets.
  2. Establish environmental principles in law: sustainable development, polluter pays, integration, and the precautionary principle
  3. Create new institutions—an Environment Commission and an Office for Environmental Responsibility—to fill the “governance gap”: delivering world-leading environmental accounting and reporting and access to environmental justice.

We’re delighted that the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, has listened to points (2) and (3) and committed the Government to consult on action in the new year. Thank you so much to everyone who supported our campaign for helping us to get this far.

To operate effectively, both the principles and the new institution will need to be established in law, so the stage is surely set for a new Environment Act.

The key now is to make sure that the Act doesn’t just replicate the environmental protection we enjoy today as part of the EU, but goes further to turn round and improve the state of nature.

We’ll be pressing for a strong statutory basis for the environmental principles, with clear duties to observe them across government. This should be enforced by a new institution with the freedom, expertise, resources and powers needed to hold government to account whenever the environment is at stake. Then, to go further, we still need a strong environment plan to set clear objectives and put in place the visionary policies and the funding needed to achieve them.

We’ll update you on how you can help here on the blog.

 

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