Speech by Joan Ruddock MP to the Women’s Institute 90@90 Conference - London, Wednesday 5 March 2008
Thank you for your kind invitation to speak.
As an environment Minister, the WI is very close to my heart, and it’s not really hard to see why. You’re campaigning on climate change – both on policy and on personal actions; you’re campaigning on reducing our huge mountain of food waste; and you’re campaigning on sustainable consumption through the 90@90 project, which we have been pleased to support through the Environmental Action and Climate Challenge Funds.
On Monday night I met a woman called Sahena from Bangladesh. She was in London as part of an Oxfam campaign on gender and climate change adaptation. Typical of many Bangladeshis she’d had to rebuild her home five times because of the floods. But she is fighting back. As the elected president of her village committee she’s organising the women to be disaster aware. Teaching them how to raise the foundations of their homes and how to make portable clay ovens.
Bangladesh, of course, has always had annual monsoons but now they have become less predictable and the rains are much heavier. There is no escape for Sahena – she and her fellow villagers must adapt as best they can. We in the developed world, I think, have a responsibility – both to help with the adaptation in the poorest and least developed countries and, more importantly, to slow and then reverse the growth in climate changing emissions.
No woman, I think, can fail to understand what it must mean to be Sahena.
One of the reasons we value your interest so much is your potential to embrace the challenge of climate change and make it real for people. You have developed creative partnerships with Government and business – your work with WRAP on food waste and home composting, and with Marks and Spencer on the carbon challenge has been particularly effective.
The point you demonstrate so vividly is the need for Government, business and individuals to act together to promote more sustainable consumption and tackle the threat of climate change. Each of us, of course, has our part to play. Although individuals are responsible for over 40% of carbon dioxide emissions, our ability to reduce that figure will depend heavily on what kinds of energy we have access to, whether there are realistic alternatives to using our cars, and the choice of more energy efficient products in the shops.
So what is Government doing? At the broad scale our strategy is threefold.1 First, to put a price on carbon which includes environmental externalities and promotes greater energy efficiency and low carbon investment. Second, to support the development and introduction of new low carbon technologies, through research and development and the use of Government’s own buying power. And third, to remove the barriers to individual and community behavioural change.
These barriers are not just about cost. Energy efficiency and money saving goes hand in hand, but that doesn’t always give people enough of an incentive to take the greener option. Let’s face it – many people, I suppose probably not in this room, but perhaps our husbands, still leave lights blazing when they’re not needed, or forget to turn our heating down when we’re not in. Everyone’s got used to using energy without a thought about the environment or the cost. 2
Nor are the barriers to action just about awareness and concern. Defra’s own research confirms that well over 90% of the population are aware of climate change and over 60% of people are concerned that we risk facing a major environmental disaster unless things change. But changing awareness and concern into action is difficult. Most people will only consider making changes that fit within their current lifestyle, or they may be sceptical about the value of taking action when others are not. Unfortunately, being concerned about climate change does not automatically convince people to take things off standby, or resist the temptation of an energy guzzling super-sized plasma TV.
So we need an approach which tackles this complex mix of barriers as well as working with the grain of people’s positive motivations.
Products is one key area. Our recent research into consumer behaviour shows that people generally assume, new generations of products will be better for the environment. That may be true in some cases - a fridge bought today will only use the half the energy of one bought 10 years ago. But for televisions, the average energy consumption is actually rising as we move towards larger screens and ‘plasma’ models.
The same research tells us that people expect government and business to raise the environmental standard of products and to remove the least sustainable products from the shelves, rather than leave consumers to wrestle with the statistics and with their conscience. I accept that this is a challenge we need to rise to. And we have been making some headway.
We have been at the forefront of European efforts to raise the standards of energy-using products, and to show the energy performance of products on clear “A-to-G” labels. We’ve been working with business to encourage the phasing-out of the most inefficient types of light-bulbs – and we will achieve that. And we’re starting to extend this approach into other areas such as the supply chain for milk and clothes. Just in the last few weeks we’ve started a national consultation on how we can reduce the amount of harmful phosphates in washing powder.Increasingly, we will be challenging businesses to develop solutions which automatically make it easier for consumers to reduce their ‘footprint’ of the products they buy.
Energy in the home is another key issue For many people the biggest barriers to actually cutting their energy bills are habit and apathy. Your eco-teams project has just given an excellent example of how to overcome these barriers - face to face contact, positive feedback and being part of a group all help to motivate people to act. In a similar vein, the Government is providing additional funding to the Energy Saving Trust to develop a new Green Homes Service, announced a few months ago by the Prime Minister. It is essentially a green MOT for homes. It will provide advice on energy saving, but also on water, waste reduction, recycling and green travel options.
Empowering people to act is also an important focus of the Government’s Act on CO2 campaign. The campaign is designed to bring together the disparate messages about climate change and respond to the need for clarity and direction from Government. Our Act on CO2 calculator - I hope you will all go away and try it - helps you to see the link between your daily behaviour and climate change and allows you to calculate your carbon footprint and gives you suggestions about how to reduce it. It is web-based – but I know how good the WI is on IT.
Already we have had over three quarters of a millionvisitors to the calculator and in a poll half of the people who had seen the campaign said they had taken, or were planning to take, action as a result. And research tells us that women are more flexible and rather more willing to act than men – you know that.
Going one step further, research suggests that a visual reminder of energy consumption is an effective way of encouraging people to reduce energy wastage. The Government set out its approach to visual display units in the Energy White Paper. This will ensure that customers are provided, as soon as we can manage it, with real-time information that will help them to reduce their electricity use. And within the next decade we aim to offer a smart meter to every household that will allow two way communication between the household and the energy company and make it easier for people to generate their own energy through micro generation and feed it onto the grid.
But to change behaviours we must also demonstrate to people that it really is worthwhile for them to take action, that their action will count, and that the whole of society will have to play its part.
And so we have at the moment going through the Houses of Parliament, the climate change bill. We are the first country in the world to have a legally-binding long-term framework to cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change. The Bill puts into law our targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60% by 2050 and by at least 26% by 2020, against a 1990 baseline. These targets will be delivered through a new system of five-year carbon budgets, which will set binding limits on CO2 emissions and ensure that every year’s emissions count.
I know as members of the NGO coalition Stop Climate Chaos you have been lobbying for the climate change bill to be strengthened on a number of fronts - increasing the 2050 target to 80%, annual milestones and the inclusion of international aviation and shipping.
So I am pleased to be able to tell you today that we have tabled several amendments to the Bill. One amendment will require the new Committee on Climate Change to review the level of the 2050 target – reporting back later this year, and they will also consider the implications of including other greenhouse gases and international aviation and shipping emissions in our targets and budgets.
Another amendment will require the Government to set out an annual indicative range within each five-year carbon budget
If all goes well we should get Royal Assent this summer.
Once passed this Bill will not just demonstrate the UK’s international leadership, it will provide certainty for business investment decisions, and it will demonstrate to the public that this is for real and it’s for now. People will start to see these changes soon - more renewable technologies coming on stream, greener products on the shelves, smart energy meters in their homes.
Your role in turning all this into action on the ground is hugely significant. Its particularly important because you’re women. Women at the heart of community life, women as workers and consumers, women as mothers and grandmothers. Our power as women, as consumers, has steadily increased over the years as our economic independence has grown. Women are leading the drive for ethical purchasing and we can lead the race to avert dangerous climate change.
We might wish for a greater sharing of domestic duties, but lets use the influence we have in our homes to lower our household’s carbon footprint. Let’s use our womens’ networks – in the way you have pioneered – to bring about the vital behaviour change that can put Britain on the path to a low carbon economy. Let’s do our bit – not just to protect our own futures, but those of women like Sahena who are already bearing the burden of climate change.
Thank you again for inviting me today. We very much value the cooperation we have had with the WI over the last few years and hope that it will continue to grow and blossom.
1. See Annual Report to Parliament, July 2007
Page published: 5 March 2008