Green Brexit

my talk today is going to be on green

brexit or on

green politics after brexit but what i

want to do today is

offer you three perspectives which

hopefully will

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help us to concentrate our activism on

this issue so i think my

talk it really is going to be less about

the concrete practicalities of how we

can campaign on this there are people

who are better placed to speak about

that

and more to sort of offer these

perspectives from which we can get a

better sense of what needs to be done

what things

need to be monitored where in other

words we need to pay attention

so these three perspectives are as

follows the first

sees brexit as a problem of political

attention

the second sees brexit as a problem of

international cooperation

and the third um goes a bit more into

the nitty-gritty of the uk’s current

policy landscape which again

has been made even more uncertain uh by

covid

and we’ll have time in the q a to

discuss um the talk and

any any other things you want to raise

so i suppose it might be good to think

about when we sort of just

step back a bit and think about december

2019 the um

general election uh i spent a lot of

time going to door to door

in my borough of tower hamlets in london

and

i personally found it very difficult to

persuade voters of the environment’s

relative importance of its importance

most people

you know agreed many agreed that we need

to take urgent

political action to address the climate

crisis

but leave voters especially were given

very few options at the ballot box

labor’s then uh notoriously unclear

brexit stance

was nevertheless softer than the

conservatives

whose manifesto paid comparatively less

attention to the environment as a

strategic priority despite

these kind of ad hoc pledges on plastics

farming subsidies

offshore wind power but the greens and

the lib dems of course were

unequivocally remain parties

and this created a huge problem how are

you supposed to vote if you wanted to

leave the eu but without

potentially compromising environmental

standards

in other words the election produced a

cleavage that didn’t need to be there

and which failed to accurately reflect

public opinion

the campaign group friends of the earth

whose website is worth checking out

if you’re interested in this issue

reported on opinion polls

at the time which showed that whether

you were leave or remain over 80 percent

of the

uk electorate wanted quote the same or

stronger protections for our wildlife

and environment

in a post-brexit britain those findings

were corroborated by

andy jordan professor of environmental

sciences at the university of east

anglia by the wildlife trust

and by the institute for public policy

research

all of these uh separate studies showed

that there is simply no political

appetite

with your leave or remain for lowering

environmental standards after brexit

cast your minds back to january or

february so again before kovid

complicated things still further there

were widespread reports

in the media of brexit fatigue

and i think this is an important issue

brexit’s sort of deep troubled choppy

waters

effectively drowned out other political

issues not just

within westminster in the media but

beyond that in in the eu

as well uh theresa may’s parliament was

among the most

legislatively uh inert in recent british

history

passed very few bills a mainstream news

outlets only

sporadically addressed brexit’s possible

impact on the environment

its effects however are not going to be

confined to these shores

they’re going to cascade outwards to the

eu

as a region and also potentially to the

world beyond

eu leaders hold major summits only four

times a year

and officials and diplomats have

privately complained of brexit’s

disruptiveness

and of the gridlock in which other

priorities are currently stuck

discussions of the eu’s long-term

environmental strategy

which aims to make its member states

carbon neutral by

2050 were repeatedly

marginalized with one diplomat

complaining uh quote

that we can’t make any progress on

climate change until brexit is resolved

one way or another

alexandra maria boxer from the lsc i

hope i’m pronouncing her name right

um wrote an excellent paper on this in

which she argued that brexit

has hijacked the eu agenda and as i said

i want to be really clear about this the

relationship between brexit and green

politics

um is an important one and its effects

will cascade outwards to the region

and will even have um potentially a

global impact

emmanuel macron for example has

repeatedly criticized brexit’s role in

slowing uh the eu’s response to the

paris agreement of 2016 uh whose mission

is to limit global warming uh to two

degrees celsius above

pre-industrial levels so this is my

first point

and this isn’t going to be an important

point for us as ordinary activists and

his citizens

brexit has dominated so much of our

political attention uh since the 2016

referendum

um and we need to sort of really try

hard to uh

keep track of what’s going on despite

all of these sort of complicated

narratives contradictions

uh and the sheer scale of news that’s

being presented um

to us my second perspective and a way of

framing um activism on this issue

um is to think a little bit i don’t want

to spend too much time on this thinking

about the dynamics of international um

cooperation there’s a really really good

book

let me forget its name now uh it’s

called global green politics by

peter newell it’s a relatively recent

book and he talks a little bit about

brexit and green politics

and he makes this really really good

point that because the climate crisis

is global uh green party or green

political manifestos around the world

are often and must be often strongly

internationalist

he also says that one of the

predicaments of contemporary green

politics

is how to deal with the international

system

with the westphalian logic of nation

states

given the unprecedented challenges

global challenges

with which we’re confronted it does seem

reasonable i think to ask whether new

bodies and international structures

are required to produce effective

consistent

long-term multilateral responses to this

global crisis

brexit theoretically at least as a

regional and domestic problem

flies in the face of these requirements

it’s also worth

pointing out that the uk historically

has been a key player in the

eu’s climate policy uh landscape

the passing of the climate change act in

2008 for example

um had a knock-on effect and it spurred

other eu members uh to act

so questions are naturally going to

arise about the balance of power

within the eu after brexit we’ve already

seen some

indications of how this might go but

again i don’t want to try and

sort of say anything too concrete here

and naturally this sort of change in the

balance of power will affect the block’s

environmental policies

um and attitudes a group of researchers

from

the university of sheffield pointed out

that climate change denying governments

in central and eastern europe poland

hungary for example

may become emboldened um by the uk’s uh

withdrawal

again these dynamics are hard to assess

and predict but it’s reasonable i think

to

anticipate some negative blowback

brexit then naturally raises questions

about the importance of multilateral

mechanisms and international cooperation

as neil puts it very succinctly the

debate

about europe and brexit in the united

kingdom is revealing of the dilemmas

greens face

in navigating this difficult space

between internationalism on the one hand

the need for a coordinated international

response

and localism on the other as i said my

campaigning on this very much falls

within the latter um

focusing on green issues within my

borough

wild brexit doesn’t necessarily signal

uh the uk’s retreat into itself

uh the concert and if you remember the

conservatives uh

had this disingenuous and not to mention

ambiguous

slogan of global britain with which they

tried to counteract this fear

but brexit certainly does make stat sort

of divergence

possible with a clear knock-on effect

for regional politics

it is really conceivable that those

divergences

um will negatively affect the uk’s

environmental policies but it might also

give us room to improve them

you know and it’s worth thinking about

that it’s worth pointing out that greens

and green activists have repeatedly

criticized what they see is the eu’s

environmentally costly and negligent

neo-liberalism

and there is a long history of green

descent within europe uh

sweden in the early to mid 1990s

is a good example of this

this brings me to my sort of third um

and final perspective um with which to

frame

uh green activism after brexit and

that’s the nitty-gritty of uk policy

brexit must be seen in a regional

european context in a global context but

it is

also perhaps even fundamentally a

domestic phenomenon

its environmental impact will be

determined almost exclusively i think

by our political leaders and their

appetites whose equivocations

make it difficult to know where to

concentrate our activism

uh house of laws committee concluded i

think this is from 2017

quite definitively that the eu is the

source of and a vehicle for

most of our environmental legislation

and protection

that goes from things like regulatory

standards to governance structures

to enforcement while alyssa gilbert and

maria carvalho from

the grantham foundation at lse have

anticipated what they say is

going to be a lack of sanctions and

enforcement of environmental regulation

once the uk leaves the eu the current

government of course

insists otherwise its latest update from

january 2020

again covert has sort of slowed the rate

of response on this

uh claims that the uk government and the

devolved administrations

are firmly committed to carbon pricing

as an effective tool

for achieving our carbon emissions

reductions targets for net zero

any future system they say will be at

least as ambitious

as the european union emissions trading

system

and that leaving the eu will not affect

our statutory commitments under the uk’s

climate change act which is after all

domestic

legislation the government also insists

that

the uk will remain a party to

international climate change agreements

including the paris agreement and that

its commitment to those agreements will

remain as strong as ever and will be

unaffected by leaving

the eu but observe as much

uh sort of more sharply uh much sharper

and more experienced than i have pointed

out that there are some

conspicuous silences in the government’s

um statements

the climate change act aside there are

currently no safeguards legal or

political for over 150 eu directives and

1

100 pieces of legislation which address

amongst other things things like water

quality

animal welfare emissions trading waste

disposal

many eu rules have not been translated

yet into british law and this

as we’re beginning to realize is a vast

and complex undertaking and it’s going

to happen at such speed

that it’s going to be very difficult for

us to effectively scrutinize them

the government really promises and

promises there are no guarantees that

the uk will maintain its environmental

standards let alone increase them

precisely because we’ll soon be outside

the eu emissions trading system

the fuel quality directive the renewable

energy directive to name just a few it

also remains to be seen how the fierce

competition for trade deals

uh not to mention the final form of

brexit uh perhaps the greatest variables

of all

it remains to be seen how these would

affect standards over time

michael gove who is a useful person to

talk about here because he’s an

ex-environment minister

and minister ex-minister for no deal

preparation

gov wants us to believe that our

standards will increase under this

proposed office

for environmental protection which at

any rate won’t open for a significant

while and covid again has delayed that

but it is sort of difficult to seriously

believe him

uh he’s been a long-standing critic of

the eu’s environmental standards

and the current environment uh secretary

george eustis

has shown in the way he’s voted that

it’s not easy to pursue a free trade

deal with trump’s america

whilst protecting food standards the

political appetite

for protecting standards i just don’t

think it’s there at the moment

one last thing then i’m done before we

can move on to the q a if you’re really

looking for

something to sort of hold on to here i

want to know more and i want to sort of

keep track of this keep track on the

government’s website

and in the media there are various

outlets reporting on this on the current

environment bill

that’s before parliament it’s a huge

piece of legislation um

it’s the most important piece of

legislation we could talk about

um its committee um has been suspended

until i think september because of kovid

but the bill is important because it’s

intended to effectively replace the

directives i i rattled off earlier

but on closer inspection it does no such

thing the new standards on air for

example which really affects my borrower

in particular and this is something i’m

really passionate about

won’t come into effect until 2022 and

there’ll be plenty of opportunities to

backslide before then the standards are

also demonstrably lower than the eu’s

as the environmental journalist fiona

harvey pointed out clause 81 of the bill

gives the secretary of state powers to

weaken targets for the chemical status

of water

and this is just one example of the

bill’s constructive or rather

destructive ambiguity

and i think the real challenge of

activists will be to keep track of this

bill

to unpack that constructive destructive

ambiguity

and to form coordinated responses uh

consistently over time