The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), a UK government agency, has asked for the UK to aim high and take action now to realize its environmental ambitions.
OEP publishes its first monitoring report regarding the 25-year Environment Plan of the Government.
It urges government to now take stock and take decisive, coherent and purposeful action to ensure that the environment is protected and improved for future generations.
The report is here to support this. Taking stock: Protecting, restoring and improving England’s environment, outlines six building blocks that should be in place.
We are urging government to take immediate action to address the urgent situation.
Chair of OEP, Dame Glenys Stacey stated: The 25-year Environment Plan was an ambitious effort to address the environmental challenges. Yet, we continue seeing worrying and persistent trends in environmental decline. Our rivers are in a poor condition, bird and other species numbers have declined significantly, poor air quality has serious implications for the health of many, and our seas, seafloor, and oceans are not managed sustainably.
This will be a difficult task. The Environment Act and the tools it provides offer government a real chance to make a difference. We call on the government to make full use of the Act, and to implement the environmental improvements necessary for proper stewardship.
It is time to have a clear, ambitious vision for the environment that is shared by all government agencies.
Government must aim high, act faster, plan well for a sustainable future, and give priority to this crisis.
The OEP identified six building blocks as follows:
- Understanding environmental drivers and pressures
- Vision-making
- Set goals
- Strategie and policy that are coherent
- Governance
- Monitoring, assessing and reporting
These headings are where the OEP makes 16 recommendations for government. These include:
- A comprehensive inventory of the environment’s condition
- Prioritisation immediate of environmental concerns
- A clear, coherent vision for the 25YEP that is evidence-based and coherent
- All government departments must share a commitment to the environment and a strategy for the environment
- Ambitious long term statutory goals
- Clearness about the relationship between the targets of the same policy area and coherence among them.
- Accountability for delivery of the 25YEP across the government
- All government policies and strategies that impact the environment must be aligned to the government’s environmental ambitions
- Create and publish an evidence-based, consistent, transparent, and accessible way to assess progress towards the 25YEP goals
Dame Glenys stated that she wanted government to prioritize the environment and to set clear goals and ambitious targets. It must also provide a coherent set strategies, policies, and delivery mechanisms to reach each goal. It requires strong cross-government governance, accountability, and robust evaluation.
We are urging government to take immediate action to address the urgent situation.
