Speech by Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP to the Sustainable Development UK Conference 2008, London – 6 March 2008
Thanks very much.
There’s a tradition now, so I gather, of Defra Ministers coming to the SDUK conference to give an account of how we are doing with implementing the UK Sustainable Development Strategy “Securing the Future.”
So I don’t want to disappoint, but I also want to say some other things as well. So, first, the progress.
We have a strong and influential Sustainable Development Commission, the Government’s independent advisor, advocate and watchdog. It will shortly be reporting on the sustainability of the Government’s estate and operations, and it won’t hold back in telling us that we need to do better.
Jonathon Porritt’s and the SDC’s criticism is occasionally stinging. But no one can seriously deny that it spurs us on to do better. And its recent report on tidal power, on Ofgem, and on supermarkets have been authoritative and really interesting. We may agree - or disagree - with the SDC’s conclusions, but everyone recognises its contribution to public understanding.
We published the Water Strategy just a month ago and it is all about sustainability. Why we need to reduce carbon emissions from pumping and treating water, to reduce our use of water because we risk running out of it in parts of the country, and to make the way we pay for water fairer. Now that really is thinking about a precious resource in the right way.
We will shortly publish the draft Marine Bill, so implementing the commitment we made in Securing the Future. This will be the first attempt ever in the UK to put in place a system for managing our marine resources in a sustainable way.
We are making some progress on getting the natural environment to be properly valued in decision-making. The natural environment was recognised in the CSR as one of the Government’s priorities. We are requiring that the natural environment and the cost of carbon are taken into account in all policy decisions – and that we do so on the basis of valuing whole ecosystems – not individual parts of them. This is a complex area and Government is only starting to get to grips with it. The real test of course will be how this changes policy in the future.
And all Government Departments have published a second round of Action Plans this year, setting out how each of them are going to contribute to sustainable development. So what are they doing?
There’s the plan from the Department for Children, Schools and Families on how schools can be places where children learn about sustainability not just in the classroom, but also around the building, by seeing the recycling bins and by thinking about the transport they use to get there. And in doing this, the children aren’t the only ones who learn and are inspired to act. Parents, teachers, governors and head teachers are also taking part.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has decided to set higher standards for new buildings and to commit to all new homes being zero carbon homes by 2016.
The Treasury not only started the Stern Review under Gordon Brown, but also took sustainable development into account when agreeing budgets and targets for the next three years with Departments. The analysis behind the whole spending review included climate change and natural resources in looking at the five big, global, long-term challenges the UK and the world face. The international part of the Environmental Transformation Fund is one result of that. The increase in spending on flood and coastal defence is another.
The Department for Transport is now looking to take climate change into account. The UK has been leading the successful push in Europe to include aviation in the Emissions Trading Scheme; it will now have to pay its part.
We are pushing for new EU standards of carbon efficiency for cars – 130 grammes per kilometre by 2012 - and we would like to see Europe go further by setting now a 100 grammes per kilometre by 2020 or 2025 at the latest.
The government has asked the Renewable Fuels Agency to undertake a review of the emerging evidence on the environmental, economic and social impacts of biofuels. And Ruth Kelly recently announced a six-fold increase in funding for cycling (£140m over the next three years) which will help tackle the challenges of climate change and obesity, and gladden Jonathan Porritt’s heart.
The NHS is working with the SDC and others to improve our health and wellbeing by encouraging healthier, more sustainable lifestyles. Take the example of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. It has introduced a travel plan that has reduced car use by 13 per cent and increased bus use by 11 per cent and a quarter of staff now cycle to work.
When I met the Local Government Association on Tuesday we discussed what we already know - that local authorities are absolutely central to the fight against dangerous climate change. And we can see that in the news that the overwhelming majority of local authorities actually want to have reducing carbon emissions as one of their priorities when it comes to agreeing the new Local Area Agreements for the next three years.
And talking of climate change, Government policy has already moved much, much further than many would have imagined in 2005.
Then, who would have thought that we would become the first country in the world to legislate for the change to a low-carbon future with legally binding carbon reduction targets? And yet that is exactly what the Climate Change Bill is doing.
Who then would have predicted that a review by a former head of the Government Economic Service on the economic impact of climate change would have a global impact? But that’s exactly what Sir Nick Stern’s work has done.
And who would have thought then that an international panel of scientists advising governments would win a Nobel Prize for Peace together with a former Vice-President of the US, but that is what the IPCC – which, I am proud to say, includes scientists from Defra - has done.
And it is exactly this type of vision and determination that we need to from all the nations of the world as we move from December’s agreement in Bali to the deal we have to do by the time we get to Copenhagen in 2009.
Now, that’s work in progress. But the question on many minds may be this. Will strategies, and standards, and action plans, and roadmaps and multi-lateral negotiations actually make a difference to people’s lives? Will anything change?
Well, one way is to measure what is actually happening. So, every year we publish our sustainable development indicators – ranging from economic performance to health to education to crime to biodiversity.
We use a traffic light system: green for going in the right direction, amber for not enough progress, red for going the wrong way. The UK’s public reporting on sustainable development is internationally highly regarded and much emulated. And we keep trying to improve what we measure. Last year we launched a new indicator that says something about how people think their lives are going and how happy they are with their lot.
The point is this: out of the 101 indicators, 50 were green this year; only 11 were red, and that’s down from 17 last year.
Of course, figures will fluctuate year on year, and there still are too many indicators on amber and red, but they say something about how things really are. For example, we have de-coupled economic growth from a rise in carbon emissions. We are now doing much better on recycling than a decade ago. Our rivers are getting cleaner. There are fewer burglaries and less fear of crime, and so on.
So where we do have examples of successful sustainable development then let’s please tell each other about them, but we mustn’t be complacent about what’s ahead of us.
Climate change. The loss of biodiversity. The growing gap between the richest and the poorest in the world. A world of 6.2 billion souls to become one of 9 billion within 50 years. Growing consumption. Desertification. All of these are frightening and urgent. And no one of us – Government, NGO, business, community - has the know-how or the plan to deal with this alone.
You who work on sustainable development in organisations or communities are used to pointing out the inadequacy of what’s being done, the lack of urgency, the need for things to really, really change. I am sure there’s a lot of frustration in the room today. A lot of impatience.
Yes, public understanding and debate about climate change has never been so widespread. And yet we – together - still have a struggle on our hands in convincing people that we all need to fundamentally change the way in which we work and live.
Indeed if you stopped a hundred people in the street and asked them what sustainable development meant, I suspect no two answers would be the same. “Dunno, mate” “Something to do with planning?” some might say. “Treating the earth as if we mean to stay…,” “Living on the income and not the capital…,” “Not consuming things as if we had two more planets tucked away in the cupboard…”
Getting across what sustainable development is, making it mean something, showing its relevance to people’s lives, and telling the truth that it involves making choices – all of those things are a real challenge.
First, we need more evidence. Evidence of the kind the Sustainable Development Commission has put together on low-carbon energy, be it nuclear or tidal or wind energy. Evidence of the benefits that flow from doing things differently. Evidence that the economy can gain from doing so. Evidence that it works.
Second, we need to communicate all this much better. We need more of the Nobel Prize winning type efforts of scientists and of people who can tell stories that inspire and uplift and make sense of it all. Showing people what sustainable development actually means when you’re making policy, or running a business, or designing a building, or making a product, or providing an education, or just getting on with everyday life. If you walk around in the foyer downstairs and visit the workshops you’ll see dozens and dozens of examples from all over the place. But we need more of them and we need more people to see them. What is today’s best practice needs to become the commonplace tomorrow.
Third, we need everyone in every field to ask and then to answer the question “How can I make my lifestyle more sustainable and ensure that the quality of life for this and future generations is made better and not worse?” “What one thing am I going to do differently from now on?”
Fourth, we need to support people in getting on with it and make sure that institutions help make that happen. Whitehall and Westminster don’t necessarily know best, and we’ll do best if we work together. And that includes doing so across the globe – which is why the new type of climate change diplomacy that Margaret Beckett and David Miliband have established at the Foreign Office is just what is needed.
Fifth, we still have a long way to go at fitting together the economic, the social and the environmental in particular, ensuring that the economy lives within environmental means. Help will soon be at hand in the shape of carbon budgets, setting out how much carbon we in the UK can emit over the next 15 years.
These budgets will require us to make choices; if we emit more over here then we will have to emit less over here. They will force us to think in a different way and will bring home to us that ‘living within our means’ is about to acquire a whole new meaning.
And making these choices means asking – and the answering - some really hard questions. At the Department for International Development, I used to grapple with this one. How can we increase trade with developing countries in a way that helps them to gain economically and improves social justice, without damaging the environment?
Across the world governments grapple with trying to reconcile the growing demand for international travel by increasing numbers of people with cutting carbon emissions?
What sources of energy are we going to use – wind, nuclear, a Severn Barrage, coal – with CCS or without - and how much of it should we produce? What kinds of products do need and can we use?
There are some who say that sustainable development is too complex, too abstract, and that we should focus on simple, single issues. But these hard choices do not lend themselves to that.
And I think the best way of ensuring that we don’t end up getting stuck where we’re heading unless things change is if we do face up to these hard questions, and if we stop tearing down anything that looks like part of a potential solution, and if we relish debate and listen, rather than the argument becoming so shrill that the complexities get lost, the decision-making process is cut short and different views are drowned out. We must not allow this to happen.
Thank you.
Page published: 27 March 2008