On 2 December 2024 at the Oxford Climate Society our climate website The Borrowed Earth Project was proud to launch two highly original reports by its Pakistan Research Fellows.
November 2024 saw the publication of the 2024 5th edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England, Water & Waterways, vols 100 and 101, for which I was Consultant Editor, along with the expert Editor Siobhan McKeering. This made for a busy summer.
I am delighted to have started on 1 July 2024 a 6 month contract working at the Office for Environmental Protection (‘OEP’) – www.theoep.org.uk
The European Court of Human Rights ‘ECHR’ delivered a landmark ruling on 9 April 2024 in a climate case brought by 2,000 Swiss women, mostly in their 70s
On 29 October 2022 the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Therese Coffey, announced that the UK government was unable to meet its own statutory deadline of 31 October 2022, set in its own Environment Act 2021, for setting the minimum number of key environmental targets required by that legislation. It is apparently still working through the 180,000 responses from the public about its earlier consultation on environmental targets.
UK government proposals to dispense with all remaining EU “retained law” carried over from Brexit include plans to revoke 570 pieces of environmental legislation by the end of 2023. Every aspect of environmental legislation (water, air quality, waste, chemicals, pesticides), and laws on agriculture, fisheries and much else will be affected.
It turns out that there are at least two ways in which you can subvert an unwritten constitution. The government of Boris Johnson has tried both of them. First, you can ignore unwritten rules, constitutional conventions and observance of the rule of law with an unrestrained contempt that sends the message that such rules are for the ‘little people’. Secondly, you can use a Parliamentary majority to bring in increasingly illiberal legislation that removes rights and undermines constitutional protections against unrestrained executive action.
In September 2006 I had the good fortune to be invited to speak at a conference in Mariupol, Ukraine, on the ‘Effective Implementation of Environmental Laws’. What is happening there now has reminded me of a visit to Ukraine at a point in time when it was still emerging from its Soviet past, and of earlier witnessing the Berlin Wall and life behind the Iron Curtain.
On 23rd February 2022, the European Commission published a legislative proposal for a new Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. Although the proposed Directive remains to be negotiated and will have a lead in period before implementation, it is likely to have an immediate impact in signalling the likely direction of travel for major companies in the EU and beyond.
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.
The Environment Bill, first published in draft in 2018, subject to interminable delays and carried over from one Parliamentary session to another, finally completed its passage through Parliament on 9th November 2021, still mired in controversy over whether it addresses with adequate clarity the pressing need for effective enforcement of environmental laws
