| Sustainable development is the over-arching framework within which all human activity should take place. It involves, crucially, the concept of environmental limits. While we may not be able to specify exactly the nature of those limits in all its forms, we can be certain that our global assault on ecosystems is now pushing those limits hard - with potentially catastrophic results not only for the natural world but for humanity itself. This is reflected most clearly in the extent of concern about global warming; but equally the loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, land cover changes, and acute water stress may also have disastrous social and political impacts.
If we are to avoid such consequences, governments must now take radical steps to address environmental objectives, and the window of opportunity for doing so is limited. There is an urgent need to promote a deeper understanding of sustainable development and to incorporate it within all aspects of policy making. This is the context in which the Environmental Audit Committee views all its work, and indeed our various reports aim to evaluate progress towards sustainable development across the range of Government activity.
This report, however, transcends our other work. It addresses the concept of sustainable development itself and is intended to make a fundamental contribution to the development of a new Sustainable Development Strategy. In our view, it is no longer appropriate simply to consider environmental objectives as an adjunct to social and economic objectives. The new Sustainable Development Strategy must place overriding importance on the need to abide by environmental limits, and to that extent it should have a primarily environmental focus.
We appreciate the difficulties the Government is facing in adopting a more radical approach. Problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss are global, and the contribution which the UK can make is relatively small. The Government also has legitimate concerns over issues such as international competitiveness. However, the UK is in the position to give leadership here and to influence other nations. We applaud the extent to which the Government has already done so—in particular, by setting the 60% carbon reduction target for 2050. We would urge it to display still greater courage in taking forward its Sustainable Development Strategy and turning the illusion into reality.
This is the greatest challenge the world now faces, and we must not fail.
|
