Select Committee on Environmental Audit Thirteenth Report

Part 2: Taking it forward— recommendations for the future

104. We said last year that: "There is indeed an impressive range of policy documents and guidance in place which relate to sustainable development. But our fear is that much of the work undertaken on this agenda occupies a limbo existence which has little impact on department's real priorities. It is a fear which is compounded by the very concept of sustainable development which can all too easily be used to obfuscate as well as empower."[86]

105. We would draw four main conclusions from our analysis in this report:

• The Government should remember that the original motivation behind the concept of sustainable development (as promoted by the Brundtland Commission and at the Rio Earth Summit) was to take more account of environmental issues in decision making and to avoid crossing critical environmental thresholds.
• The UK Sustainable Development Strategy, with its broad focus on 'quality of life' objectives, has not been successful in mainstreaming environmental objectives within policy development. Indeed, in characterising sustainable development as promoting a better quality of life (an objective which governments have always been interested in), it has obscured the trade-offs between environmental and other objectives and the hard decisions which need to be made.
• The most obvious and serious failure of the Sustainable Development Strategy has been the absence of any significant progress in getting to grips with sustainable production and consumption (SCP). While the priority accorded to this agenda was boosted by the Johannesburg World Summit, it has always been clear that it should comprise a core part of any sustainable development strategy. Yet after five years, we have a framework document which ignores consumption issues entirely, responsibility for the latter being devolved outside government to a Round Table which has only just been set up.
• To deliver on the original intention behind the concept of sustainable development, the Government must increase its commitment to environmental objectives and accord them higher priority throughout the work of all departments. This is clearly a political issue, and more radical action may be limited by the extent of public support. But Government has a responsibility to display leadership and commitment at the highest level here, both domestically and internationally.

106. The Government deserves much credit for the introduction of the 1999 Strategy and the comprehensive set of national indicators. However, it is clear in retrospect that the Strategy has not had the impact expected, and that the concept of sustainable development has not displaced the priority accorded to economic growth. This is because of the inherent ambiguities implicit in the notion of sustainable development, and because environmental limits are not as yet sufficiently defined in all areas to provide a rigid framework for policy making.

107. In the light of our conclusions, we believe that the focus of a new sustainable development strategy should be primarily environmental. Moreover, whatever the merits or weaknesses of any future strategy, much will depend more on the manner in which it is implemented; and indeed the Government has itself recognised that departments have not taken as much account of the 1999 Strategy as might have been expected. We therefore set out in this final part our recommendations for the new Sustainable Development Strategy and its implementation. This draws upon the arguments and conclusions in the first part of the report.

The new Strategy

108. The new Strategy should encompass the Brundtland definition of sustainable development and emphasise the concept of environmental limits underpinning that definition. It should focus more explicitly on placing the environment at the heart of government. In particular, it should identify where environmental objectives conflict with economic and social objectives, and set out the basis on which Government policy is to be developed in those areas.

109. The headline indicators should be revised so as to show clearly and objectively how environmentally sustainable the UK is, and so as to enable progress on mainstreaming environmental objectives to be assessed. They should therefore include aggregate measures such as ecological footprinting or 'years to sustainability', together with other measures of economic well-being, resource productivity, and the global impact of UK consumption.

110. The new strategy should set out all key environmental targets, both domestic and international, in order to provide an adequate basis for accountability. It should also provide the mechanism by which further policy related targets are set. In this respect it should fulfil previous EAC calls for a structured approach to the setting and monitoring of targets in a policy context, mirroring the development of a similar approach for greening departmental operations.

111. The new strategy must clarify the relationship between the strategy itself and the existing series of topic-specific strategies. In doing so, the Government should review the effectiveness of the latter and update them accordingly. In particular, while the Statement of Intent on Environmental Taxation published in 1997 is an admirable statement of principle, the Government urgently needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to implement it in place of its current ad hoc approach.

Implementing the Strategy

112. Departmental responsibilities should be reorganised in order to reflect priorities identified in the new strategy and the need to achieve overriding environmental objectives. In particular, given the necessity of making huge cuts in emissions in order to combat global warming, responsibilities for energy policy, transport and the environment (including climate change) should be brought together in a single department.

113. Where key environmental objectives remain split across several departments, the Government must be much more "joined-up" in order to deliver key environmental objectives. It must ensure that new initiatives—such as the ODPM's 'Sustainable Communities' initiative and the huge expansion in residential building proposed for the South-East—are built on a fundamental understanding of sustainable development rather then merely paying lip-service to it as they do now. Moreover, the Government should ensure that key objectives of the Strategy are implemented throughout the wider Health and Education estates.

114. The Sustainable Development Unit, currently located in DEFRA, should play a far more cross-departmental and central role in ensuring that the objectives of the new Strategy are incorporated in the development of new policy initiatives across Government. In doing so, it could explore where there are significant conflicts between environmental and other objectives. It could also identify where the aims and targets of departments, agencies and regulatory bodies are insufficiently aligned with key environmental objectives. In these respects, it should function like the Strategy Unit.

115. Policy appraisal procedures must be revised so as to require specific consideration of impacts on key environmental objectives such as the need to reduce biodiversity loss and to achieve the 2050 carbon reduction target. Moreover, the Government should fulfil its commitment to review the remits of all departments and public sector bodies with a view to incorporating the promotion of sustainable development as a primary objective. It must also make available adequate staff resources within departments to developing the sustainable development agenda.

Monitoring and audit

116. The Government should continue to publish an annual monitoring report. This must include a critical and objective analysis of progress against all the indicators and targets set out in the Strategy. The report should also include environmental appraisals of relevant policy instruments (including projected impacts), with full details of the methodology used.

117. The annual monitoring report should highlight where significant conflicts between environmental and other objectives exist, set out on what basis policy is being developed in these areas, and highlight any changes to priorities or targets which might be required. In this respect it should constitute a rather more pro-active strategic document than the current monitoring report, and function more like the Government's Pre-Budget Report.

118. To the extent that the new Strategy constitutes a more structured basis for setting policy targets, it will also provide a more secure basis for both the Environmental Audit Committee and the Sustainable Development Committee to audit progress. In this context, the NAO is already assisting us with our annual analysis of the Greening Government initiative, and it is currently auditing on our behalf the implementation of WSSD commitments by departments. The EAC will wish to build on this developing relationship in order to verify and analyse performance on a comprehensive and regular basis. We recognise that there are resource implications associated with this task which we will need to take account of.

Leadership and awareness

119. The extent to which politicians can pursue more radical policies to achieve environmental objectives is inevitably limited in a democracy by the extent of public support. As the fuel duty protests of 2000 demonstrated, no government can pursue an unpopular policy against outright public opposition. However, public values will inevitably have to change—in response, for example, to large increases in the price of oil, or to the increasingly serious impacts of climate change.

120. Political leadership can play an essential role here in anticipating and promoting such shifts in public values. The Government needs to capitalise on the fact that the public does share a commitment to environmental objectives and, where the right frameworks and opportunities are provided, can indeed adjust their behaviour accordingly. We are faced with a small window of opportunity to promote such behavioural change largely on a voluntary basis without incurring too great a cost. If we do not grasp this and action is delayed, it is likely that more radical measures will become necessary in view of the scale of impacts human civilisation is now having on the natural world.

121. We therefore need a different order of commitment from political leaders to sustainable development, and we have often emphasised in the past the importance of political leadership in this respect. If the Prime Minister wishes to place the environment at the heart of government and does indeed believe that climate change is the most serious threat facing mankind, we would expect to see him play a far larger role in promoting and implementing the new Sustainable Development Strategy than he has done to date. He could display greater commitment, for example, by:

• giving more priority to environmental and sustainable development issues in his speeches;
• enhancing the role of the SDU and re-locating it within either the Cabinet Office or his own office;
• requiring environmental issues to be fully addressed in all relevant policy initiatives; and
• ensuring that the Cabinet Committees ENV and ENV(G) do indeed function dynamically, driving forward the new Strategy and appraising the impact of all policies—not just those which are overtly environmental.

122. The new Strategy should be accompanied by far more focused and well-resourced campaigns to increase public awareness in specific areas and promote education for sustainable development. In particular, the overriding threat to mankind posed by global warming should be reflected in the extent of such campaigns—for example, through the use of sustained and high profile advertising and promotion to improve energy efficiency. The Government should also initiate comprehensive training programmes to ensure that the UK has sufficient skills in the new technologies required to facilitate their development and implementation.

123. We realise that these are difficult issues for politicians across the world because it is always easier to trade-off short term economic and social gains against long-term environmental goals. It is therefore essential to build a consensus across political parties on the priority and approach required to address environmental issues, while at the same time promoting a far greater and more profound understanding among the public of the global consequences of our current lifestyles.

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86   EAC, Thirteenth Report of 2002-03, Greening Government 2003, HC 961, Foreword  Back

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Prepared 8 November 2004