Mr.
Woolas: We have not touched on subsections (3) and (4),
which are important. I reassure the hon. Gentleman that subsection (1)
states that the Secretary of State must lay before
Parliament, while subsection (3) states that the Secretary of State
must consult the other national authorities. It is
important that reference is made to the devolved Administrations.
Subsection (4) states that the Secretary of State must
send a copy, an imperative repeated in clause 13. I hope there is
consensus on the
clause. Question
put and agreed
to. Clause
12 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
13Duty
to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon
budgets David
Maclean (Penrith and The Border) (Con): I beg to move
amendment No. 39, in clause 13, page 7, line 13, leave out subsection
(3).
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 55, in
clause 13, page 7, line 13, leave
out , taken as a
whole,.
David
Maclean: Amendment No. 39 suggests that we remove
subsection (3). If, by any inadvertence, I pressed it to a Division and
if, by any inadvertence, it was accepted, we would delete the
words The
proposals and policies, taken as a whole, must be such as to contribute
to sustainable
development. Let
me make it clear that I am passionately committed to sustainable
development. I do not wish to remove the subsection from the clause,
but I am advised that such a suggestion is a means by which we can
discuss matters. I want to find out what the Government mean by
sustainable development, hence my proposal that we remove those words
from the Bill. My remarks will be brief because I want to hear the
Governments interpretation of sustainable
development and to know what their policies and proposals,
taken as a whole, will look like if we are to ensure that they
contribute to sustainable
development. I
shall define what sustainable development is not. What is unsustainable
development? I like the definition that an unsustainable situation is
one where the natural
capitalthe sum total of natures resourcesis used
up faster than it can be replenished. Sustainability requires that
human activity uses natures resources only at a rate that can
be replenished naturally.
Inherently,
the concept of sustainable development is intertwined with the concept
of carrying capacity. Theoretically, the long-term result of
environmental degradation is the inability to sustain human life. Such
degradation on a global scale could imply the extinction of humanity. I
will not go down that route, which I explored in detail last week in
the context of biodiversity and rain
forests. I
am passionately committed to sustainable development because it is one
of the main things that I spent a lot of time negotiating at Rio. When,
as a Minister, I had to negotiate a working breakfast with the Chinese
at 7 am, with the Indians at 8 am and with the Americans at
9 am, I needed a sustainable biodiversity system myself to
survive. Agenda 21 was one of the key documents that was signed and we
negotiated every word of it. As an incoming Minister, I had no idea of
the importance in UN-speak of getting each word correct. If we had
accepted the sloppy word, it would have meant £3
billion extra being paid into some fund. Our representatives were
cautious as we negotiated the words.
Since 1992 in
Rio, the term sustainable development is thrown about
everywhere. With all due respect, I have a parish council that puts
down a new little park bench on the grass with a couple of daffodils
and says that it is fulfilling Agenda 21, the sustainable development
agenda. In some ways, the term is being diminished. There is utter
confusion about its meaning.
With due
deference to the current Government and to the Government of whom I was
privileged to be part, I believe that the Brits are pretty good at
defining such matters. I left Rio understanding the meaning of
sustainable development, and I am certain that the
Government have a clear concept of its meaning. We should impose more
on the rest of the country and the rest of the world, because our
concept is probably right.
Gregory
Barker: My right hon. Friend is making another important
point. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Sustainable
development is widely misused. A large part of the problem is
that it has been confused with the term sustainable
growth.
The
Chairman: Order. I appeal to members of the Committee to
address their remarks to the
Chair.
Gregory
Barker: I beg your pardon, Mr. Cook, for my
discourtesy. The
problem is that sustainable development has been confused with
sustainable growth. Often, when people use the term
sustainable, it has nothing to do with environmental
sustainability, but means growth that will go on and on and never
end. 11.15
am
David
Maclean: My hon. Friend is right, and that could be a
justifiable definition of sustainable development. I
conclude with these remarks. The term is in the Bill, but it is not
definedI cannot find a definition of sustainable
development in the Bill. I
suspect that this subsection is one where Government advisers will say
Well, Minister, if it is deleted, so what? It does not remove
anything from the Bill. If it stays in, so what? Who cares? It does not
add anything to the Bill
either. I
want the provision to mean something, so when people look through the
Bill and come across the 12 pages on carrier bags and the
bit on waste and garbagethey will not see any mention of rain
forests or biodiversitythey will at least see
sustainable development and say, Ah! That means
X.
The
Chairman: Order. It is difficult for the Chair to tell who
is rising if hon. Members do not
rise.
Gregory
Barker: Clause 13 is an important part of the Bill. It
requires the Government to prepare a programme of emissions reductions
in order to stay within the carbon budgets established by the Bill.
However, we must be mindful that in order to reach macro-level targets,
by which I mean national and international level climate change
mitigation, many micro-level projects must be carried out. There is a
responsibility on us, as policy makers, to ensure that we do not
undermine the natural environment at a local level in the process of
trying to save it on a global
level. My
right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border and I tabled
our amendments to get the Government to explain exactly how they
interpret sustainable development, taken as a whole, as opposed to
assessing each individual policy and proposal on the grounds of its
unique sustainability criteria. My right hon. Friend did an excellent
job if raising the issue of sustainable development as a term. I
wholeheartedly agree with him that the term is often meaningless and is
sometimes used as greenwash. I am not suggesting that that is the case
with this Bill, but it happens frequently elsewhere. A definition of
sustainable development would help to inform the wider debate around
environmental issues as a whole, and perhaps bring some clarity and
rigour back to our language on this most important of debates
nationally.
Amendment No.
55 would require the removal of the phrase taken as a
whole, which currently appears in line 13 of clause 13. Its
removal would require each individual mitigation option to be assessed
against the principles of sustainability, rather than assessing
proposals and policies only as a whole in the round. That would allow a
Government to appraise the different mitigation options available and
choose accordingly, rather than only viewing the sustainability of a
policy on a macro level.
One need look
only at the unfortunate example of biofuels to see that just because
the ultimate Government objective is sustainability, it does not mean
that the policy goals to get there are themselves, largely through
perverse or unintended consequences, inherently sustainable. It is all
well and good to say that one cannot make an omelette without breaking
eggs, but surely everyone in Committee agreesI know that my
right hon. Friend agreesthat it is nothing short of sheer
madness to chop down the worlds single most precious natural
resource, the pristine rain forests, in the name of the environment to
achieve a nominal biofuel target.
While reducing
emissions from vehicles is an important part of reducing our overall
carbon pollution, if we can only meet the requirements of the biofuels
directives at the price of the Borneo rain forest, it would be a
Pyrrhic victorytargetindeed. A more sustainable option,
for example, would be to improve the fuel efficiency of our cars and
make significant transport emissions reductions, while at the same time
developing a biofuels policy that does not accelerate the destruction
of the lungs of the earth or contribute to the extinction of the
orang-utan or less cuddly
species. We
understand that there will be difficult choices in assessing our
options for decarbonising the economyit will not always be a
win-win situation. However, as responsible stewards of todays
environment, as well as tomorrows world, we want, as far as it
is possible to do so, to ensure that those choices are made
transparently and on the basis of a clear definition of sustainability,
rather than exclusively through the lens of cost-effectiveness or the
overarching 2050 emissions-reduction targets.
For that
reason, Conservative Members in the other place successfully argued for
the requirement that the Governments programme of action should
meet the carbon budget in the Bill and be underpinned by the
principles of sustainable development. In doing so, the Government saw
fit to introduce a caveat into clause 13, which states that policies to
achieve our interim and long-term targets must,
when taken
as a whole...contribute to sustainable
development. In
light of that, will the Minister clarify his interpretation of that
phrase? I want to know that, in striving to achieve the
emissions-reduction targets to which all of us in this place are
committed, we are not legislating to allow Government policy to ride
roughshod over short-term or immediate sustainability
concerns.
Martin
Horwood: It is good to be serving under your chairmanship
again, Mr.
Cook. The
two amendments raise important issues, and it is particularly important
that amendment No. 55 is passed. Looking for a definition of
sustainable development, I can trump the right hon.
Member for Penrith and The Border by going back to 1987 and the report
for the UN by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Our Common Future.
That defined sustainable development
as development
that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own
needs, which
is a wonderfully classic and succinct
definition. I
plucked that definition from the website of the Sustainable Development
Commission, which has rightly highlighted the risk that the various
definitions of sustainability, which include social and economic
factors as well as environmental ones, can be used to muddy the debate
and allow unsustainable policies to go forward. In particular, economic
sustainability is often taken to mean business as
usual, and it is used to justify policies that are the exact
reverse of sustainable when examined from an environmental perspective.
The biofuels example mentioned by the hon. Member for Bexhill and
Battle is interesting, although, frankly, a policy that
allowed unsustainable biofuels to form the basis of our future biofuels
policy would not be sustainable under any of the
definitions. A
rather better example, which is specifically the responsibility of the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, involves setting
the shadow price of carbon, which had a direct impact on the decision
to endorse the third runway at Heathrow. The precise definition of the
shadow price used by DEFRA in effect reduced the social cost in
environmental terms of the Heathrow third runway from some £13.5
billion, which it would have been if the methodology applied
by the Stern report had been used, right down to
£4.8 billion, thereby making the difference between
that third runway going ahead or not. That is a brilliant example of
how the use of sustainable development needs to be
precisely defined. In that sense, taken as a whole, one could say that
the third runway at Heathrow is part of a package that the Government
might excuse as sustainable in the medium term. Looked
at in isolation, however, it is clearly not a sustainable
policy.
Mr.
Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another example
that illustrates that point is the way in which the Government make
their judgment about sustainable development and the protection of the
sea coast and rivers through the Environment Agency? By changing the
terms, what properly used to be considered as a matter for defence is
now being abandoned, because points are not awarded to anything that
might mean protecting the natural and historic environment. Again, that
issue concerns the definition of what is
sustainable.
Martin
Horwood: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman; he
obviously has expertise in this matter relating to his past
responsibilities and his constituency. He has made an important point,
although the sustainability of sea defences must be considered from an
environmental perspective as well as from a local
one. In
conclusion, definitions are important, and perhaps the Minister will
address the relative importance of economic and environmental
sustainability in his remarks. In light of the Stern report, we know
that long-term economic sustainability is intimately linked to the
environment, although in many parts of government there is still the
temptation to prioritise short-term economic growth over true
environmental
sustainability.
Mr.
Woolas: The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border
has referred to Agenda 21. He made the important point that the
profound effect of that conference was to set out a process that has
significantly changed how we and other countries look at the world. It
has had a significant effect on our analysis of economics, and it
challenged some of the basics of supply and demand economics in a
beneficial way. It has been noted that, on current estimates, we are
using the resources of three planets when we only have those of one.
That is not sustainable and people understand that.
I will go
into the technical details to explain the Governments approach.
The purpose of the clause is to require the Governments
proposals for meeting carbon budgets to contribute to sustainable
development. That is central to Government policywe want to
live within environmental limits and we can only do so by means of
a sustainable economy. That policy is partly expressed through the
Sustainable Development Commission, which was established in order to
provide scrutiny and encouragement and to ensure that Whitehall, and
its wider tentacles, are acting
sustainably. An
expression of the meaning of sustainable development is within the
SDCs remit, and I will outline it for the Committee. The
principles of sustainable development are ensuring a strong, healthy
and just society, living within environmental limits, achieving a
sustainable economy, promoting good governance and using sound science
responsibly. Those principles were outlined in
Rio.
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