SPECIAL REPORT: LOOKING AHEAD TO COP26: CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE COMMONWEALTH
HOW HAS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AFFECTED CLIMATE CHANGE POLICIES/LEGISLATION AND WHAT ROLE DO PARLIAMENTARIANS HAVE IN PLANNING FOR A ‘GREEN RECOVERY’? Ahead of COP26, the UK's first Green Party Member of Parliament examines climate change policies and the role of the Climate Assembly. Almost two years ago, on the steps of 10 Downing Street, the UK Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Boris Johnson MP celebrated his election victory with the promise to make Britain “the cleanest, greenest [country] on Earth, with the most far-reaching environmental programme”.1 He renewed his predecessor’s commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and added it was his UK Government’s “solemn duty to deliver on each and every one of those commitments”. Pledges are easily made and, especially with this UK Government, even more easily broken. The UK Prime Minister’s rhetoric about global leadership on climate has kept on flowing, as have new, more ambitious climate targets: the aim of reducing carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and 78% by 2035;2 raising the target for offshore wind power capacity to 40 GW3; a pledge to protect 30% of land for nature by 2030.4 It’s not targets we are short of, it is the policies, plans and investment to reach them. And those are too often missing. Since the 2019 UK General Election, of course, we have faced a global pandemic which has understandably absorbed most of the UK Government’s time and significant financial resources to prop up the economy. But COVID-19 has also taught us some valuable lessons about how we respond to emergencies, including the heavy price to be paid if we don’t prepare for a crisis, or take action too late. The UK proved ill-prepared for the impact of the pandemic, its health service was almost overwhelmed and it has one of the highest death rates in western Europe.5 UK Ministers say that no-one saw a pandemic coming. They cannot say the same about the climate and ecological crises. The warnings have been there for decades, and they are getting louder and more
urgent. We have also seen what government can do when faced with a crisis. The response to both the public health emergency of COVID-19 and the economic fallout has been unprecedented. When government chooses to act fast, it can do so at speed and scale and find the necessary resources. The need to reset the economy in the wake of COVID-19 now presents the UK Government with a unique opportunity, a chance to re-imagine how our economy and society operate – to “build back greener”. There is widespread support for this in the UK, from the employers’ organisation the CBI, from trade unions, from civil society, and from the UK citizens’ assembly on climate.6 This was a group of 108 citizens, representative of the UK population, brought together at the request of six Parliamentary Select Committees to consider how the UK should achieve its legally-binding target of net zero emissions by 2050. Four in five of them agreed that “steps taken by the government to help the economy recover should be designed to help achieve net zero”. The UK Climate Assembly7 was organised through the UK Parliament and is a model that could be used by other Commonwealth Parliaments in their engagement with their citizens and civil society. The UK Climate Assembly had members selected through a process known as ‘sortition’ or a ‘civic lottery’ to be representative of the UK population and the included ‘engineers, health workers, parents and grandparents’. They met as an assembly over six weekends between the end of January and the middle of May 2020 and the members heard balanced, accurate and comprehensive information on how the UK could reach its net zero target by 2050. They then discussed this with each other and voted by secret ballot before the results of their work were published in a final report to the UK Government.
Hon. Caroline Lucas, MP is the UK's first Green Party Member of Parliament and
was first elected for Brighton Pavilion in 2010. She served as Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2008 to 2012, and Co-Leader from 2016 to 2018. From 1999-2010, she served as one of the Party's first Members of the European Parliament. In the UK Parliament, she is the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Climate Change and Limits to Growth and is active on many other parliamentary campaign groups
248 | The Parliamentarian | 2021: Issue Three | 100 years of publishing
