Green Councillor Kevin Pressland is a passionate campaigner for nature and the natural environment. His understanding of the threats faced by the natural world is based on expertise gained from a 40-year career in horticulture, garden design and sustainable land management:
On the 18/10/2024 Lord Krebs, a crossbencher in the Lords, proposed a bill in Parliament that would give local authorities and other public bodies a new duty to contribute to delivering targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. The Environmental Targets (Public Authorities) Bill is currently making passage through the House of Lords
Consider the Global Biodiversity Summits bleak assessment of biodiversity decline worldwide – with the UK having one of the worst losses of biodiverse habitats in Europe. We need the government to act now and give local authorities more ability to act and Lord Krebs Bill would potentially help achieve this. Though these additional obligations would need additional funds (ring fenced for these purposes) for local authorities to achieve on-the-ground realities.
Local authorities have so many duties and so little funding that they cannot possibly cope with everything. As a result, the duties that are specific, funded, or open to litigation are often prioritised. Those that are unfocused or unfunded are often left by the wayside.
That is often the case for environmental duties. Stacked against demanding duties for economic growth or housing targets, for example, the environment can be easily pushed aside. Take the general duty on biodiversity established under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act for authorities to “consider what they can do to conserve and enhance biodiversity”. A Lords select committee concluded in 2018 that this duty to “have regard” to nature was ineffective. Even after being strengthened by the Environment Act, there is emerging evidence that many authorities continue to struggle with this obligation.
There is a similar picture of climate change. Despite repeated recommendations for a statutory climate duty on local authorities in England and Northern Ireland from the Climate Change Committee and the Independent Review of Net Zero, no such duty has been established.
Failure to pass national climate and nature targets down to public bodies will jeopardise our chances of meeting these essential targets. Local authorities are clearly responsible for many of the choices that will determine whether or not we are successful.
The Local Government Authority has emphasised that local authorities influence over 80% of emissions from their area – from transport and housing to renewable energy. When an authority is making those critical, long-term decisions on transport policy, for example, it is essential that councillors and officials can draw on the authority of a statutory objective to help justify low-carbon choices and attract funding to deliver them.
The same is true—perhaps even more so—for nature. To take one example, we need to protect at least 30% of the land and sea for nature by 2030 to help reverse the decline of wildlife. According to Wildlife and Countryside Link, less than 3% currently meets the required standard.
Filling that enormous gap will require land use changes and choices that can only be made at the local level. When authorities are drawing up local development plans, they must be able to point to a legal obligation for nature as evidence of the need to protect and restore green spaces. They must be able to draw on a legal basis to push back against developers who are unwilling to build nature into the fabric of development. A legal duty would also help make the case for essential expenditure on local authority ecologists and environmental planning experts—themselves a rare species as things stand today.
Although there is now the Biodiversity Net Gain Metric, which is a legal requirement, it is still, many would argue, playing around the corners though one hopes it will have some positives.
So, Lord Krebs Bill proposition would give relevant public authorities, including local authorities, a statutory purpose and duty to contribute to delivering net zero, climate adaptation and targets set under the Environment Act 2021. Other public bodies in the list are Ofwat, the Forestry Commission, Highways Authorities, the National Energy System Operator and National Parks.
The intention is to cascade national targets down to the bodies that are responsible for day-to-day delivery. The bill would not replace existing statutory duties, but it would give new clarity to authorities’ environmental obligations.
Many sustainable developments or general duties for nature often lead to onerous reporting requirements but do not add much value. A duty to help deliver statutory targets should be much more transparent and measurable and would help the many Local Authority champions for the environment to do more for nature and climate.
It would help to justify greener decision-making and support a much clearer value-for-money case for public and private funding. Of course, the biggest benefits would be in a thriving local environment for people to enjoy, cleaner air and rivers, and enhanced economic resilience to flood, fire and crop failure.
It is clear that without the full throttle support of local authorities and other public bodies, we will not stop climate change or the decline of wildlife. Just recently, the latest Living Planet Index showed an average 73% decline in wildlife between 1970 and 2020. Extreme weather events around the world are another reminder of the imminence of climate impacts. These global risks need local solutions.
I hope you share my view that a legal link between national nature and climate targets and local authority action would help us protect and enhance the natural world’s ability to rejuvenate with assistance, example reducing fragmentation of habitat for one.
Yes we all need to do our bit for climate change. I wonder if Kevin Pressland is still driving his old white diesel van?
Good question. On the one hand perhaps we should stop buying new kit all the time,but on the other hand,vehicles that can’t pass ULEZ ought to be recycled soon ,to reduce pollution and carbon emissions.
Of course if we did that Stagecoach SE would find it’s fleet is decimated. I saw 4 Alexander Dennis AD200s operating at Westwood cross the other day,which are at least 20 years old.Where are they getting the spares to run these museum pieces? Never mind Kevin Pressland’s old banger, why is public transport so ramshackle in East Kent?
Meanwhile in the article about the flint tool found on the beach it of eras long past in which at times it was both warmer and cooler than now , so the adverse weather effects are hardly a new thing on the planet, just this time round there are lots of people who want to complain about it and blame others. Who did our long passed ancestors blame?
Have you not noticed that weather has and is changing? Do you think unprecedented weather events are just bad luck?
By all means deny climate change as is your right,ignore the growing scientific evidence,but if Thanet suffers one of these unprecedented weather events and it will,you had better have a good explanation as to why it happened.
Switching green energy ,recycling and looking after our environment might well nudge the UKs growth rate above the low level it is today,have you thought of that.
No i beleive the planets weather is ever changing and ever will be and that man’s effects on the planet have little bearing on what happens, if the planet would otherwise be unchanging if not for man , why were in eras long gone was it both warmer and cooler? Scientific data shows that was the case, but going back umpteen thousand years no one knoew or ever will how fast that change was, as such its pure conjecture that change today is due to human activity. If himans are the problem , them the sheer weight of numbers is the big issue and the resources they all consume, but i and i expect just every other person won’t be volunteering to cash out.
If you “believe” the scientific data that shows that umpteen thousands (millions, more like) of years ago the climate was both hotter and cooler (though not, presumably, at the same time), why do you not “believe” the scientific data showing that the current global warming episode is driven by humans activity: the burning of fossil fuels? And this idea is not “pure conjecture”. It’s basic physics and chemistry.
Kevin I know your intentions are well intended but our local cojncil are the biggest polluters in England.
I have just driven from London and as you hit Thanet litter increases 10 fold.All the A299 verges have had flytipping on them for months.The bins on the A299 are overflowing and blowing everywhere.Their are dog poo bins on the seafronts that are spilling into the sea along with litter from unemptied bins.I could go on.The council are apalling and I find it hypocritical that TDC keep posting articles about being green.
Dave- do you have to drive to Thanet from London because-for example- you’re a lorry driver?
Kevin writes some interesting articles but the climate alarmists have their own control agendas and money making scams, and fail to note that the climate changes all the time and they are often using dubious computer models. Many believe that there is no evidence that CO2 emissions cause climate change, and that the real causes are solar cycles, volcanoes, ocean currents and atmospheric moisture (not caused by humans). Geo engineering is also a major factor in current climate change Kevin (or cloud seeding when you want to make it sound slightly less threatening. It’s there in our skies most days and is devastating for nature and humans. And it’s all well documented. Grey water recycling in new builds could have been implemented decades ago btw.
There are no “climate alarmists”.
Indeed, the climate changes all the time, and has been doing so since the Earth had a climate. Over a period of hundreds of millions of years it has endured both desert and ice sheet conditions.
The key is “hundreds of millions of years”
What’s concerning Climate Scientists at the moment is the speed with which the Earth is heating up – since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
You don’t need computer models, dubious or otherwise. Just look at the news to see what’s happening,
No Climate Scientist – nor anyone else with a knowledge of basic physics and chemistry – will challenge the view that CO2 emissions are causing climate change.
The solar cycles – the Milankovich Cycles – are well understood by scientists. They explain how solar insolation varies over period of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. They do not explain the rapid heating of our planet over the past 200 or so years.
Volcanic activity has remained broadly unchanged for millions of years.
Indeed, atmospheric moisture leads to catastrophic rain storms. But the high moisture content is caused by warmer oceans and warmer atmosphere,caused by Global Warming.
If you call the ever increasing burning of fossil fuels by humans “geoengineering” then indeed, yes.
Cloud seeding can only work if there is already moisture in the air. Spraying silver iodide into the clouds doesn’t create water out of nothing. All it does is help precipitate rainfall.
I’m surprised that you haven’t mentioned HAARP or chemtrails. Please don’t.
Amusingly clumsy attempt to be patronising Andrew. It didn’t work in the unsafe and ineffective covid times either. BTW scientists often don’t agree. That’s the point of science without the financially endorsed propaganda.
To disagree is not the “point of science”
A definition: “Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe.” [Wikipedia]
” …any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observation …” [Britanica]
Not to be confused with Pseudoscience:”An activity resembling science but based on fallacious assumptions.”[American Heritage Dictionary]
“Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.”[Wikipedia]
I have this morning driven from London on a work drop off.I would catch a train but at £70 a pop,The ladt 8 train trips I have made have either been late, cancelled or unable to even go because they dont have a driver.I recently caught a train in France for a similar distance at it was £17. Our A299 verges,roadsand beachfront are a litter disaster even in Winter months. TDC are the areas biggest polluters.
A return from Ramsgate to Stratford International will set you back about £27, less with a railcard.
In the past month, there have been 0 cancellations on the HS1 line via Ashford.
Dave-Are you suggesting that it’s members of TDC who are dumping litter on road verges?