On 27 June 2019, the UK government committed to bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. That same month plans were unveiled for the expansion of Heathrow. Since then, the government has approved a new Cumbria coalmine, announced a review into Air Passenger Duty, and pressed ahead with England’s “largest ever” investment in road-building. If climate targets are going to be contradicted by individual policies, what is the point?
The recovery from Covid-19 provides a “unique opportunity to … reset ourselves on a more sustainable path.” There has been pressure from all sides for a “green recovery.” Alok Sharma, the Secretary of State for BEIS, has called for a “clean, resilient recovery”; while Ed Miliband, the Shadow Secretary of State for BEIS, has pushed for “the most ambitious climate recovery plan in the world.” However, individual policies are starting to contradict the message, again. The government has given a £600m loan to EasyJet with no “green strings” attached, while other airlines, carmakers, and oilfield services companies have received billions in support from the government’s Covid-19 economic support funds.
To correct course, we need to steer individual policies in line with climate targets. While the Climate Act 2008 sought to do exactly this, individual policies since then have shown sustainability to be a frail overridable barrier in the face of the “more is better” economy. If a green revolution is to be successful, a radical re-think is needed. Either we reduce the importance placed on endless growth or we make sustainability more resilient against it.
Squaring a “green recovery” with GDP
For policy-makers, economic growth is the trump card and in assessing the economic damage of Covid-19, all eyes will be on GDP. GDP growth was already a political necessity and a pandemic will not change that. Reassuringly, an Oxford University study has said that “recovery policies can deliver both economic and climate goals”; GDP growth and a green recovery are compatible. So, no problem, right? Not quite.
Here is what the study says. It distinguishes between “rescue” and “recovery” policies. Rescue policies are short-term and prioritise “keeping businesses and people alive”. These can be green. The “life and death” nature of such decisions means we can afford more – but not absolute – latitude for environmental concerns to be overridden. The financial support given to airlines, carmakers and oilfield services companies would fall under this category – there are “good reasons” for the support, but there should be “green strings” attached.
In contrast, recovery policies are about reinvigorating the economy, the effects of which will be longer-term. If not green, these measures could “entrench … the current fossil-fuel-intensive economic system.” Again economic and climate goals can be met – the study sets out recovery policies that are green and stimulate economic activity simultaneously. This includes clean physical infrastructure investment and clean R&D spending. So far, so good.
However, since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the issue has not so much been a lack of green policies but rather the co-existence of contradictory non-green policies. For example, in November 2019, the UK government suspended and ended support for fracking in England; but then, that same month gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria coalmine.
A green recovery must be more than just green policies – it must curb non-green policies. This is less easy to square with GDP growth. For a quick example, the policy statement supporting Heathrow expansion screams “growth, growth, growth”. The statement reads, “[t]he consequences of not increasing airport capacity in the South East of England … are detrimental to the UK economy and the UK’s hub status”. Taken at face value, curbing this non-green policy would be detrimental to the economy. GDP growth and climate change are in a trade-off.
A radical move away from endless growth
This conclusion need not kill the green revolution. A shift away from the obsession with GDP would work – an acknowledgement that more is not necessarily better. As Raworth puts it, “we are searching for words … to articulate a greater economic purpose than growth” (p. 42).
To this end, Raworth has created the Doughnut. The “essence” of the doughnut is a “social foundation” of basic rights that no-one should fall below, and a ceiling comprising our planet’s ecological limits that we should not go beyond (p. 11). The space in-between is an “ecologically safe and socially just space for humanity” in which “it is possible to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet”. It recognises the trade-off between endless growth and sustainability – by pursuing growth for growth’s sake, there is an unsustainable “overshoot of pressure” on our planet (p. 45).
Raworth’s Doughnut is now being launched in Amsterdam. Under this, sustainable considerations will become central to policymakers and stakeholders when considering alternative policy initiatives.
Similar shifts away from the “more is better economy” are prevalent in South America. In 2008, Ecuador incorporated buen vivir as the foundational principle of its constitution. This was followed by Bolivia in 2009. Buen vivir – in English, “the good life” – represents an alternative to “growth, growth, growth”. Article 14 of Ecuador’s constitution specifically address sustainability: “the right of the population to live in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment that guarantees sustainability and the good way of living, is recognised”.
Amsterdam and South America demonstrate that shifts away from GDP growth are not necessarily destined for the normative side-lines of policy-making. There is a growing appetite for something different, and this “something different” may be vital for the success of a green revolution.
A radical way of making sustainability resilient
While an appetite for something different is growing in the UK, those in power are not exactly ravenous for such radical change. An alternative is to make sustainability more resilient in policy-making. This resilience must be legally backed. Legal constraints are not needed if the government genuinely wants a green revolution. While the government talks a good game, individual policies – like England’s “largest ever” investment in road-building – expose these words as soundbites.
The recent Heathrow legal saga sums it all up. In June 2019, the same month the climate target was adjusted to net zero by 2050, the government set out its policy framework for expanding Heathrow. Importantly, this policy did not take into account the Paris Agreement. This was then legally challenged.
The question was whether the government policy in favour of expanding Heathrow was made in a procedurally lawful way. To be procedurally lawful, under section 5(8) of the Planning Act 2008, the government had to explain – in its policy framework – “how the policy … takes account of Government policy relating to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change”. The Court of Appeal held that the government’s commitment to the Paris Agreement was “clearly part” of government policy at the time and that, by not taking it into account, the policy was unlawful.
So, if there is a legal obligation to consider the Paris Agreement, are Heathrow expansion plans dead and buried? Not quite. The Court stressed that the duty to take into account the Paris Agreement does not require the government to “conform to its own policy commitments”. Therefore, the government can simply go again, this time taking into account the Paris Agreement, affording it as much weight as it likes, and concluding in favour of expansion.
Even with an obligation to consider, the government will reach the same conclusions – sustainability will be given the weight that is convenient.
If sustainability is to be a resilient constraint, it must have a prescribed weight, incapable of being manipulated. How this would be done is less obvious. The social foundation of Raworth’s Doughnut is (to some extent) protected from political expedience by human rights norms and laws – this perhaps provides a model for protecting sustainability.
The human rights model can be briefly summarised. The Human Rights Act 1998 makes it unlawful for a public authority to act incompatibly with a right protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (section 6), and makes it harder for the UK Parliament to enact legislation inconsistent with Convention rights in the first place (section 19). With certain human rights, the state can interfere, but only if this interference pursues a legitimate aim (being one which is important enough to justify interfering with the human right) and is proportionate to the legitimate aim. Human rights therefore must not only be considered, but carry weight and require strong justification to be overridden.
Similar rights-based protection of the environment could be possible, even if radical. This is actually how Ecuador’s constitution works. The constitution has legally recognised buen vivir and conferred rights upon nature which “[a]ll persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce”. However, it has not been the perfect solution. As Sara Caria and Rafael Dominguez explain, despite the legal recognition of buen vivir, there is still a “gap between the buen vivir ideal and the concrete policies implemented by Ecuador’s government”.
If radical change is what the UK needs, our prospects are not great. It is hard to force change as it will be hard to pin the blame on Boris Johnson. By the time we hit 2050, Labour will presumably have been back in Downing Street, Johnson will be in his mid-80s and the climate target will not have been met. The blame can be spread and the Tory governments of the last decade can point out the great targets they set and can reel off a list of green initiatives. Few will by pointing the finger at England’s “largest ever” investment in road-building in three decades.
Offline sources:
Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, (Penguin 2017)
