Is UK law adapting sufficiently to growing sustainability issues? -No.1 Overview

U.K. law is adapting sufficiently to climate change because new laws have been passed in recent years to address the problem and form initiatives to make sure that the UK keeps up to date with helping to tackle these issues. As the Committee on Climate Change (‘CCC’) states on their website, “through the Climate Change Act (2008), the UK government has set a target to significantly reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and a path to get there.” Under this act, the Committee on Climate Change was formed in order to “ensure that emissions targets are evidence-based and independently assessed” (CCC). This substantial government initiative indicates that the UK government is certainly showing a great will to address the issues relating to climate change and sustainability sufficiently. Moreover, these principles are being followed and implemented by the devolved authorities of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

For example, “the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 commits Scotland to a 42% reduction in emissions by 2020 and annual reductions between 2010 and 2050”(4). This connotes good progress in the devolved Scottish Parliament by following the initiatives of the Westminster government and it is important to have such targets to try to meet in order to create plans and structures to adhere to. That way, they can achieve their aims.

Similarly, “Wales passed the Environment (Wales) Act in 2016, which provides for the setting of emission reduction targets to 2050, including at least an 80% reduction (compared with 1990 levels)” and “the Northern Ireland Executive…has set a target of continuing to work towards reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 35% (compared with 1990 levels) by 2025” (CCC, 2017). This also suggests good progress of each devolved authority of the United Kingdom to have achievable and focused official targets and initiatives to reach to make sure the UK as a whole is doing all it can to become a more environmentally friendly and sustainable nation.

However, whilst the 2017 ‘C.C.C’ Report to Parliament – ‘Meeting Carbon Budgets: Closing the policy gap’ found that “UK greenhouse gas emissions are about 42% lower than in 1990, around half way to the 2050 commitment to reduce emissions by at least 80% on 1990 levels”, “that progress is stalling”. Overall the initiatives have been largely successful on a UK wide scale showing that the devolved authorities are also keeping up with English progress. However, “emissions from transport and building stock are rising" as “emissions reductions have been largely confined to the power sector”(CCC, 2017). From this we can learn that UK law does seem to be adapting sufficiently to growing sustainability issues but it needs to be kept on top of to ensure that progress continues and it might be sensible for the governmental departments concerned such as the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to focus more of different areas of environmental policy such as transport and waste rather than just power and setting future targets.

Overall, it seems the UK law is adapting sufficiently to growing sustainability issues because it is clear that much is being done by our current government to ensure that the UK keeps up-to-date with UN targets by setting our own and having a Climate Change Committee which meets to discuss ongoing sustainability issues and sets ideas and initiatives to solve them.