'The devil is in the detail' – Capitalising on environmental progress
To ensure we maintain and improve our environmental protections, the government has recently introduced a landmark Environment Bill to focus on the key environmental priorities of our time. In response to clear scientific evidence and increasing public concern, the Bill plans to set legally binding targets in four priority areas: air quality, waste and resource efficiency, water and nature. Equally as important is the establishment of a new green public body, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), in order to monitor progress and ensure targets set out by the government are hit.
Focusing on the waste and resource efficiency aspects of the Bill, the various measures highlighted involve:
(1) Upholding ‘polluter pays’ guiding principle through extended producer responsibility (EPR), charges for single-use plastic items and deposit return schemes
(2) Setting resource-efficiency standards to increase the recyclability, reparability and durability of products
(3) Introducing clear labelling and consumer information to enable consumers to identify more sustainable products and inform them on how to dispose of used products correctly
(4) Establishing measures to tackle waste crime including the creation of a digital system to track waste movements
Legislation is clearly moving in the right direction, and we hope to see these efforts continued at future COP summits. With the uncertainty around COP25 following its cancellation in Chile, despite Madrid offering to step in, large momentum is building around COP26 as a major milestone for international cooperation and progress. Tipped as the most important since 2015, thousands of delegates will flock to Glasgow next year. We are optimistic that COP26 will make significant headway on hot sustainability topics. Although Paris was an overall success, the future summit will need to deliver in certain areas where COP21 fell short, i.e. the setting and enforcement of legally binding targets. This also applies to the Environment Bill which, although requiring legally binding targets, states that these need to be set out by 2022 and met no less than 15 years after. As noted by Greenpeace as an area for concern, this reveals that that no legal action could be taken against the government on any potential environmental failings until 2037.
As with all goals, ‘the devil is in the detail’, and we hope that the government will not take advantage of this technicality. In the same way, we believe that the COP summits must not allow for non-legally binding targets, as these act as a similar loophole.
The enforcement of targets is crucial at this time, especially with so much riding on the upcoming 30 years to 2050. We all need to do so much more, and ensuring there are consequences from failing to meet targets is certainly another step in the right direction.