Environment taking a back seat again

 

Reposted from Edie.

An all-too-familiar story!

UK making ‘good progress’ against fewer than one-third of key environmental policy commitments

The UK Government is only driving good progress towards 27% of the 43 targets it set between 2021 and 2023 to improve nature for future generations.

 

Sarah George

 

Pictured: Nature in the Cotswolds, England.

These are some of the sobering headline findings of the latest analysis from the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), the UK’s post-Brexit environment watchdog.

The OEP assessed progress towards 43 key targets included in the 2021 Environment Act and the 2023 Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). Many targets were set for 2030. Issues covered include tree planting, water pollution, air pollution and public access to nature.

While the Labour-led Government did update the EIP in late 2025, the OEP did not have sufficient time to assess progress against the refreshed targets.

OEP chair Dame Glenys Stacy said: “While we have seen more progress in this year than in the previous reporting period, it was not the step-change needed.

“The Government must now decide whether or not it is going to meet those targets. What happens now matters.”

Concerning trends

Of the 43 targets and commitments which the OEP assessed progress towards, 13 were set under the Environment Act. Delivery progress towards just four of these targets was deemed “good” over the past year.

While a higher proportion of targets and commitments show good progress and a lower proportion show limited progress, compared with last year, the UK is not on track to halt nature’s decline overall.

The OEP raised particular concerns about sluggish progress in reducing residual waste from homes and businesses, and in protecting Britain’s most sensitive and biodiverse marine habitats.

Of the EIP 2023 targets assessed, the watchdog did see delivery progress improve in fields including clean air and climate change mitigation. This is partly due to the ongoing uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and the end of coal-fired power generation.

The OEP also tracked improvements in human exposure to chemicals and pesticides.

However, the watchdog concluded that public access to and engagement with nature is on the decline. The body emphasised the importance of improving engagement in childhood as a priority.

The OEP also tracked “limited” progress in adapting the UK to the physical impacts of climate change and extreme weather. The estimated number of properties at risk of surface water flooding has increased, along with a decrease in the condition of flood or coastal risk management assets. And wildfire incidents continued to increase year-over-year.

The UK Government’s climate advisors last year classed one-quarter (26%) of adaptation outcomes as insufficient – the highest proportion to date. All outcomes related to health and well-being are, concerningly, classed as insufficient.

Opportunities for change

The OEP’s key recommendations to policymakers this year remain unchanged from last year.

They are:

• Develop and publish a comprehensive circular economy strategy and framework
• Set out clear mechanisms for reconciling competing demands for land and sea
• Ensure that nature-friendly farming plans and incentives are effective and joined-up
• Maximise the contribution of protected sites for nature
• Accelerate action to protect and restore the marine environment

On the first two points, the Government is due to publish a Circular Economy Strategy, Land Use Framework and Food Strategy later this year. All three of these packages have been delayed from 2025.

With regards to nature-friendly farming, Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds last week confirmed that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will be reformed in 2026 following consultations with the agriculture sector.

 

When the Environment isn't Important

 Reposted from Edie.

Defra never did employ the sharpest knives in the box!

Defra slammed for setting up farm profitability board ‘without environmental expertise’

WWF has criticised the UK Government’s apparent decision to exclude environmental charities and ecologists from a new farming industry board intended to boost resilience and profitability across the sector.

 

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is setting up a new Farming and Food Partnership Board following a review into measures to enhance farmer livelihoods.

This review was conducted by former NFU president Minette Batters, with final recommendations published this week. It comes after polling found that three-quarters of farmers have seen reduced incomes since 2020, pushing many to diversify their business models or even leave the sector.

A statement from Defra stipulates that the new Board will include representatives from agriculture, finance and retail businesses as well as policy experts. It will be chaired by Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds and the deputy chair will be Farming Minister Dame Angela Eagle.

The statement reads: “The Board will focus on removing barriers to investment, improving how the supply chain works and unlocking growth opportunities across different parts of primary production and processing. It will have a clear emphasis on supporting agricultural productivity, homegrown British produce and strengthening food security.

WWF has expressed concern about the Board’s proposed makeup. It stated that the proposed membership of the Board is “envisaged without environmental expertise”, at a time when extreme weather is harming farm productivity and biodiversity is in decline.

“A strong, profitable domestic farming sector only contributes to food security when it also protects and enhances the natural capital which sustains food production: a stable climate, healthy soils, clean rivers and abundant wildlife,” said WWF’s policy lead on production, Sofia Parente.

Even the NFU said the notes fall short on the environment, as they provide no clarity on when the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will re-open for applications following its abrupt closure this spring.

Defra’s notes on the Board do make passing reference to climate resilience. For example, it will advise the Government on how best to reform the planning system to speed up the delivery of on-farm reservoirs, which will help farmers cope with droughts.

The notes also refer to unlocking private investment into “farm transformation”.

Strategic approach needed

The review has been published as Defra works with other Government departments to finalise a new land-use strategy. This will set out how competing demands for land, from activities such as housebuilding, energy infrastructure expansion, fuel production, nature conservation and farming will be strategically managed.

2026 should also see the UK Government updating the National Food Strategy. The previous iteration, published under the Conservatives, was widely criticised for excluding the majority of expert recommendations made by review lead Henry Dimbleby and his team.

Batters’ review concluded that, without these overarching plans, farmers are “taking decisions in isolation” without confidence in a coordinated direction of travel for the long run.

The poultry problem

Nature NGOs are concerned that Batters’ review states that the UK has “significant untapped potential” to increase the domestic production of horticulture products and poultry.

There are fears that this could, in practice, mean the creation of many more industrial chicken farming units.

The Soil Association last year published an analysis of the ecological state of stretches of the River Wye, concluding that increasing algae blooms are attributable to phosphate and nitrogen pollution.

Similar issues are visible along stretches of river in Shropshire, Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Powys and Herefordshire.

The blame for the problem has been placed at the foot of large-scale industrial chicken farms. Most deny responsibility and claim that they properly manage animal wastes and chemical inputs.

“Farmers operating these units are often doing so out of financial necessity and need a viable alternative,” said the Soil Association’s head of food policy Rob Percival. “Urgent Government action is needed.”

Reposted from Edie.

It's not just forced labour that's at issue. Plenty of the stuff coming into the country, especially from SE Asia, is produced by people working for less than anything representing a minimum wage. Inequality is rampant everywhere.

UK ‘risks becoming dumping ground’ for products linked to modern slavery

As the EU and other markets modernise regulation in this field, the UK needs new legislation to tackle modern slavery domestically and end the import of products produced with forced labour.

 

Sarah George

 

This is the call to action from the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (IASC), following a review which found that forced labour costs the UK around £60bn each year – equivalent to about 2% of GDP.

The review additionally found that the UK imports around £20bn worth of goods each year which are likely linked to forced labour in their supply chains. The Commissioner warned that this figure is likely to increase as other nations clamp down on these imports, leaving the UK as a “dumping ground for goods which were blocked by others”.

Changes to legislation

With these challenges in mind, the 2015 Modern Slavery Act is no longer sufficient, the IASC concludes. The Act requires all large businesses to publish a statement on how they manage slavery risks in their operations and supply chains.

New legislation to tackle this challenge, without over-burdening businesses and private sector bodies already navigating complex rules, is set out in the IASC’s review conclusion.

The proposed design of the legislation has been drawn up with input from trade unions, businesses and human rights experts in the UK and beyond, as well as the general public in Britain.

Public polling found that four in five Brits would welcome new laws to prevent goods made with forced labour from entering the UK market.

The IASC’s proposed new legislation would prohibit forced labour-risk products from the UK market, placing the burden of compliance on importers and retailers. It would also confer new duties on Ministers to protect human rights in supply chains, while compelling businesses found to have committed serious harm to take appropriate remedial action.

The Fairtrade Foundation has stated that, should such legislation be introduced, it must be more closely tied to UK efforts to tackle environmental harms in supply chains.

“Environmental harm and human rights abuses are two sides of the same coin in supply chains, and the government must restrict both,” the Foundation said in a statement.

“It would be an unacceptable oversight to limit supply chain transparency only to human rights abuses.”

The Foundation is one of several NGOs supporting a new Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) law, aligning the UK’s approach to that of many other nations and preparing for mounting international legal cases over ecocide.

Truly Bonkers - Dismantling of NCAR

 Reposted from the Washington Post

This is the Trump administration at its worst.

Trump officials to dismantle ‘global mothership’ of climate forecasting

Russell Vought, who directs the White House Office of Management and Budget, announced plans to split up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, citing concerns about “climate alarmism.”

Updated December 17, 2025

By Ruby Mellen  and  Carolyn Y. Johnson

The Trump administration said Tuesday it was breaking up one of the world’s preeminent Earth and atmospheric research institutions, based in Colorado, over concerns about “climate alarmism” — a move that comes amid escalating attacks from the White House against the state’s Democratic lawmakers.

“The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado,” wrote Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget on X. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

The plan was first reported by USA Today.

The NCAR laboratory in Boulder was founded in 1960 at the base of the Rocky Mountains to conduct research and educate future scientists. Its resources include supercomputers, valuable datasets and high-tech research planes.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

The announcement drew outrage and concern from scientists and local lawmakers, who said it could imperil the country’s weather and climate forecasting, and appeared to take officials and employees by surprise.

NCAR’s dismantling would be a major loss for scientific research, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at NCAR and an honorary academic in physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Trenberth, who joined NCAR in 1984 and officially retired in 2020, said the research center is key to advanced climate science discoveries as well as in informing the climate models that produce the weather forecasts we see on the nightly news.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said in a statement that the state had not received information about the administration’s intentions to dismantle NCAR.

“If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” Polis said. “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The action comes as Republicans have escalated their attacks on Polis and others in the state for their handling of a case involving Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted in state court on felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump announced last week that he is pardoning Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence, but it is unclear whether Trump has that authority, because she was not convicted in federal court.

In a joint statement, Colorado’s two Democratic senators, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colorado) slammed the move and vowed to fight back against it.

In his social media post, Vought said that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location” — but did not specify further.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

“The Colorado governor obviously isn’t willing to work with the president,” said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The official declined to cite any specifics about how Polis is refusing to cooperate from the administration’s perspective, but denied that the move was in response to the state’s refusal to release Peters from prison.

The facility “is not in line with the president’s agenda,” the official added, noting that it had “been on the radar” of the administration “for a while.”

The National Science Foundation, the federal science agency that funds the center, was blindsided by the announcement, according to a person familiar with NSF operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. But they said facilities managers at NSF will need to be involved in moving assets or capabilities.

 

NSF released a statement Wednesday saying the agency would publish a letter outlining next steps. It said that the agency would transfer the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer, used to support Earth science research, to another operator. It will also sell off or transfer two NSF aircraft that NCAR manages and operates.

The agency will also “redefine the scope of modeling and forecasting research and operations to concentrate on needs such as seasonal weather prediction, severe storms, and space weather.”

Antonio Busalacchi, the president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which oversees NCAR, said it was aware of reports to break up the center but did not have “additional information about any such plan.”

“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters,” Busalacchi said.

An internal email obtained by The Washington Post, sent Tuesday night, emphasized the critical work NCAR does for “community safety and resilience.”

Busalacchi wrote that the news had come as a shock, and the institution had reached out to NSF for more information. “We understand that this situation is incredibly distressing, and we ask that you all continue doing what you have done so well all year — provide support for one another as we navigate this turbulent time,” Busalacchi wrote.

The center is “quite literally our global mothership,” Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, wrote on X. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”

NCAR plays a unique role in the scientific community by bringing together otherwise siloed specialists to collaborate on some of the biggest climate and weather questions of our time, Caspar Ammann, a former research scientist at the center, said in an email.

“Without NCAR, a lot could not happen,” he said. “A lot of research at US Universities would immediately get hampered, industry would lose access to reliable base data.”

Ammann added that around the world, weather and climate services use NCAR modeling and forecasting tools.

The Colorado-based center draws scientists and lecturers from all over the world, and through its education programs has helped produce future scientists, Trenberth said.

He said he feared not just for the discoveries and data that would be lost if the center were to close, but for the early careers that could also be affected or destroyed.

“If this sort of thing happens, things will go on for a little while,” he said. “But the next generation of people who deal with weather and science in the United States will be lost.”

Natalie Allison and Ben Noll contributed to this report.