In the second of our notes from the highly successful Wildlife & Countryside Link conference in London on 6th December 2021, we cover some of the remarks by George Eustice, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs on the Environment Act 2021, and discuss the potential significance of his remarks on environmental targets.
George Eustice said that –
while celebrating the recent passage of the Environment Act 2021, this was only a beginning;
the Bill had covered three separate sessions of Parliament stretching over 600 days;
the government had been able to press ahead with the establishment of the Office for Environmental Protection ‘OEP’ and recruitment of the Chair, Board and Secretariat;
there had been almost a year’s work on preparation of environmental targets, and whether to retain “legacy targets” from the EU or to establish new targets for the UK;
there had been much work in preparing policies on Biodiversity Net Gain and on Nature Recovery Strategies;
there was much in the Act about waste and resources, deposit return, extended producer responsibility;
there had been an initial consultation on Environmental Principles – and a final version of the guidance on that was due in early 2022;
there would be a statutory consultation on Environmental Targets by Spring 2022 – these could cover waste and resources, resource efficiency, water quality (nutrient pollution, diffuse pollution, water companies and sewerage, mining pollution) – reference was made to “good environmental status” ( a key feature of the Water Framework Directive 2000 ) as a “legacy target”;
Biodiversity and Biodiversity Net Gain would be addressed by an overall target on species abundance, with subsidiary targets for example on habitat creation contributing to this;
Air Quality targets would include one for PM2.5, but could also cover, for example one on population exposure and one on Ammonia;
Another important factor was agricultural policy, with £2 billion re-purposed in the first year, starting to replace area payments with sustainable farming incentives and a move towards soil protection.
It is right to note the real progress represented by the new Act’s provisions on Biodiversity Net Gain, Nature Recovery Strategies, an overall Species Abundance Target and some of the new provisions on protected sites. In these areas the government seems genuinely committed to real change, and the NGOs who campaigned at length for the changes seem to relish the opportunity to see these policies develop successfully.
Environmental targets
The Secretary of State referred to the Water Framework Directive target of “good status” in controlled waters as an “EU legacy target”. However, the Water Framework Directive was concluded under the UK’s Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers. The definition of “good status” consisted of definitions of “good chemical status” and “good ecological status”, which were the result of hard work by water experts, several of whom worked for the Environment Agency. It is therefore not the case that the Water Framework Directive was some sort of EU scheme imposed on a reluctant UK without any input from this country.
However, the Water Framework Directive standards are hard to meet. Initially they should have been achieved by 2015, but that was before extensions and exceptions started to be applied. As at 2020, 0% of England’s rivers achieved good chemical status, and 84% of them failed to meet standards of good ecological status. The reasons for this are various. They include a puzzling reluctance to take seriously the enforcement of existing environmental laws such as those (passed by an earlier Conservative government) limiting the dumping of untreated sewage into rivers by water companies except in exceptional circumstances. High levels of pesticides, agricultural and household chemicals washed down the rivers will also not have helped.
The question, to be considered further in the statutory consultation on targets in Spring 2022 is whether the answer to this record of non-compliance is to lower the standards further.
The Secretary of State said that in the past if an EU target was missed it resulted in a “300 page action plan”. This may have been the case with the repeated failures of the UK to comply with the Air Quality Directives, which resulted in a series of visits to the Court of Justice of the European Union, but also to the UK Supreme Court, which may have required the action plan in question.
Mr Eustice indicated some preference for “unpacking” targets rather than having “potentially misleading” overall targets.
Again, the point to look out for in the statutory consultation on targets in 2022 will be whether this approach to removing overall targets and picking out smaller component parts simply represents an overall lowering of ambition and a full scale regression from (higher) EU standards. That is not what we were promised in the many, long debates on the Environment Act 2021, and it appears from recent polling that it is not what the public wants.