Jeremy's Blog 3rd February 2023: Environmental Policies and Climate Change Adaptation

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 2nd February 2023

The momentum of environmental policy development is now gathering substantial pace with recent key building blocks increasing its potential coherence:

• the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 issued this week replaces 2018’s 25 Year Environment Plan
• demanding environmental targets were set in December, several bearing directly on farming and rural land management and now with more detail on the basis of assessment
• setting out the interpretation for English law and policy of central environmental principles
• all being monitored by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP).

With much bearing on rural land, the OEP review of the 25 Year Environment Plan noted that:

• "With around two-thirds of land in England in agricultural use, it is particularly concerning that climate change adaptation within this sector is consistently given the worst rating by the Climate Change Committee."

Last week, DEFRA set out its offer of environmental land management options for 2023 and 2024, showing how the money released from Basic Payment is to be used to buy change from farmers. Along with regulation, these offers can be expected to develop with experience and need.

Outside England, climate change and biodiversity frames discussion of Scottish agricultural policy and the schemes part of the prospective Bill. The Agriculture (Wales) Bill is centred on “sustainable land management” while environmental agreements are to become a “central plank” of policy. Biodiversity is an increasing theme in planning policy.

With environmental and climate change issues overlapping, Sir James Bevan, outgoing Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, struck what seems a new and practical note in a speech last month urging a sense of perspective on University of East Anglia students.

He was concerned that a focus on fear and doom could stand in the way of tackling it:

• “climate doomism is almost as dangerous as climate denial. Indeed doomism might even be the new denial. And it’s equally misplaced. It’s not justified by the facts. And it risks leading to the wrong outcome: inaction.”

There is an echo of Stuart Kirk’s observation to a conference told “we are not going to survive” that “no one ran from the room; in fact, most of you barely looked up from your phones at the prospect of non-survival.”

In the same vein as the recent Skidmore report to the Government, Mission Net Zero, he concluded:

• “If we tackle the climate emergency right, and treat it not just as an existential risk but as a massive opportunity, we can actually build a better world.”

In short and simple terms, he summarised the large tasks, explaining the approach of mitigation and adaptation:

• “We know what we have to do to solve the problem. The solutions are technically quite simple.
• “First, we need to reduce and as far as possible stop entirely the emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases: what the experts call mitigation.
• “And second, we need to adapt our infrastructure, our economies and our lifestyles so we can live safely, sustainably and well in a climate-changed world.

Adaptation, how we will live with the climate change already to come, is a fundamental human answer to such challenges. It is a big issue for agriculture (with risks to yields even in the UK) and for the design and delivery of the developing environmental policy.