Green Matters: Harnessing The UK's Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 ' Wildlife And Clean Air

• Law Firm: Gowling WLG
• Subject Matter: Environment, Environmental Law, Climate Change, Clean Air / Pollution
• Author: Mr Ben Stansfield
• Published date: 17 February 2023

At the end of January 2023, the Government published the UK's Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 (the EIP) - the first revision to the 25-Year Environment Plan, published originally in 2018. The EIP is a critical pillar in the Government's climate change strategy and sets ten goals intended to stop the decline of nature, and to reverse it.

While the EIP contains much to interest the most passionate of environmentalists, it also presents many opportunities for the commercial world to play its part. In setting out the 10 goals, it openly states that "businesses and investors are a key part of a nature-positive future", and sets the policy framework to enable that to happen.

In a series of five briefings, we will review the EIP and highlight some of the key messages. In this first briefing, we examine Goal 1: Thriving Plants and Wildlife; and Goal 2: Clean Air and, in doing so, touch on some of the key factors that will influence the EIP.

The regulatory backdrop to EIP - Key factors

There are a number of cross-cutting themes and policies that are noted throughout the EIP, the delivery of which will be critical to achieving all 10 goals. They include:

• Green jobs - the Government has, for a number of years, expressed a strong commitment to create hundreds of thousands of green jobs across the UK as part of the transitioning economy. The EIP notes that new green jobs will be created by its new policies: for example, in the next 12 months waste collection and packaging reforms will create 21,000 jobs 10,000 in flood defences, and 3,400 jobs in tree planting and peatland restoration;
• Green finance - the Government aims to raise at least '500 million annually by 2027 in private finance to support nature's recovery in England, but hopes that will increase to '1 billion by 2030. The EIP notes that a Green Finance Strategy will be published in 2023 to update its 2019 strategy;
• New farming schemes - following Brexit and the transition out of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy the Government hopes that 70% of agricultural land and 70% of farm holdings will be covered by its new farming schemes - highlighted in the EIP - by 2028;
• Greening Government commitments - the Government has taken (and will continue to take) steps to improve its own estate, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and water usage; and
• Making green choices - the EIP is at pains to stress that achieving its goals will be a shared endeavour, from central government to individual citizens. It explains that society will become greener by design, reducing the 'ask' on citizens to do the green thing, and how taking green actions will become more affordable.

Goal 1: Thriving plants and wildlife

Generally

The EIP notes that "the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, all of which are essential to human survival, all depend on thriving, diverse and species-rich ecosytems". Pressure on nature in the UK and overseas has come from a variety of places: agricultural management, climate change, urbanisation, pollution, hydrological change, invasive non-native species and woodland management. Together, these elements all come into the crosshairs of the EIP.

Halting the decline

A...