There’s no denying the fact that the state of nature and the rate our climate is changing is at a tipping point in the wrong direction, making the announcements over the last 14 days by our new Prime Minister extraordinary to say the least.  

This is not a pretty blog.  If you’re not feeling positive today, hold off reading it until you do.

After a leadership race in which the global environmental crisis was hardly mentioned, on 23 September the new Government published its Growth Plan. This proposed to “release the huge potential in the British economy by tackling high energy costs and inflation and delivering higher productivity and wages.”  “Growth, Growth, Growth” Liz Truss proclaims as the panacea to solving the UK’s social and economic challenges. 

A few days later, markets reeled from the new Chancellor’s mini-budget designed to stimulate growth. His proposals to cut tax and borrow more led to a run on the pound, spiralling inflation and mortgage rates rising to their highest since 2008. Add this to the energy crisis and explosive increases in the cost of living and many people, already desperately worried about how to make ends meet, are left wondering if it could actually get any worse.

The International Monetary Fund, President Biden and finance ministers and bankers across the G7 have all had something to say about this – and so do we, on behalf of wildlife which is also set to lose in this reckless gamble.

Put simply, the Growth Plan is a plan of deregulation with total disregard for the natural world.  As details began to emerge, environmental charities rose up together: The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, National Trust and more – with over eight million members between us – got behind a new #DefendNature campaign.  It’s not the first time we’ve had to do this, but never has the assault been so overt at such a critical time for wildlife. We must mobilise the public if we are to defend our depleted and beleaguered wildlife from this appalling attack.

The plan suggests that the Government sees environmental protections and regulations as “red tape” and bureaucracy that are barriers to growth.  This is factually not the case. Nature is the bedrock of society and the economy, as all members of BBOWT know.

So how bad is this?  It’s bad.

Energy: Gone are the Green Levies on energy bills designed to invest in green technologies, and back are the fossil fuels that are wreaking havoc with our climate and which exacerbated this summer’s appalling drought – fracking and a hundred new North Sea oil drilling licences.  Where is the mass retrofit of energy efficiency to housing?

Judicial Review: The Government wants to change the Judicial Review system to avoid claims which cause “unnecessary” delays to delivery of roads. It seems reasonable for us to assume that such changes would be made with the intention of stopping claims such as our judicial review against the OxCam Expressway. How will nature have any voice at all?

Planning: The Government intends to “cut red tape to make it quicker to deliver the UK’s critical infrastructure” and accelerate “the construction of vital infrastructure projects by liberalising the planning system and streamlining consultation and approval requirements.” The exact method by which they will “liberalise” our already weakened planning system and “streamline” approvals has yet to be announced, but the Government will bring forward new legislation (Planning and Infrastructure Bill) to (i) reduce the “burden” of environmental assessments, (ii) reduce bureaucracy in the consultation process, (iii) reform habitats and species regulations, and (iv) increase flexibility to make changes to a Development Consent Order once submitted. The Government will also announce plans in Autumn 2022 to increase house building to get “the housing market moving”.  Is this the death knell to the wise and forward-looking planning system that recognised how crowded our island was becoming – the nail in the coffin of all those hard-won wildlife protections that founders of BBOWT and other Trusts fought for?  We can’t let it be.

Investment Zones: New “Investment Zones” may be the vehicle by which the Government delivers a lot of its deregulation. The Growth Plan states that “new Investment Zones will provide time-limited tax reliefs, and planning liberalisation to support employment, investment, and home ownership.”  They ”will aim to drive growth and unlock housing by introducing designated development sites to deliver growth and housing, streamlining planning applications that are already in flight measures including disapplying legacy EU red tape.”  The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will publish more detail shortly about the level of deregulation and the streamlined mechanism for securing planning permission. To someone who loves nature this will be detail on the type of torture we face.   Who wants to live in a land of concrete and tarmac? Humans don’t; wildlife can’t.

Environmental Protections from retained EU Laws: The Bill would revoke hundreds of laws safeguarding our air, rivers and wildlife that have their origins in EU laws – which UK environmentalists fought hard to win in the first place and protect post-Brexit. Such laws would now be rewritten or completely dropped, the majority expiring on 31 December 2023. The Retained EU Law Bill is an attack on nature, democracy and an overt breaking of Government promises.  The Bill hands huge power to the Government to decide what laws to keep, what to change and what to allow to simply let expire. Because 70 per cent of EU laws were environmental, Defra has more EU retained laws (570) than any other Government department.  We’ve fought countless times before and after Brexit to save these laws and we can’t give up now.

Farming Subsidies: The Growth mantra pulsing through the veins of Whitehall has also found its way to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, our so-called custodians of the environment. In the name of Growth, the newly-appointed Secretary of State, Ranil Jayawardena, swiftly took aim at the ‘E’ in Defra, putting the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) under formal review.  This uncertainty will put yet more farmers off signing up for environmental schemes, despite millions having already been invested in trials to prove viability. Although they now deny it, the Government has indicated it will return to a system where farmers are paid for land they own (as with the Common Agricultural Policy) but without any of the environmental conditions the EU imposes. A Defra spokeswoman said that the department was reviewing its plans given “the government's aims of boosting food security and economic growth". BBOWT works with many farmers and we know that they want to invest in their soil, restore habitats and grow food and that this is all possible.  We must protect wildlife and future harvests and this is not the way to go about that.

I’ve been working for wildlife all my life and I’m 51.  When I started out few people around the world were listening.  Now the whole world knows that man-made interference with the natural world is wreaking havoc on a planetary scale. The UK kicked off the industrial revolution and has a particular responsibility to lead the way in addressing the resultant climate and ecological emergencies. 

Indeed, we are living under a Government elected in 2019 on a Manifesto that said:

• We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
• We placed a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect. We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.
• Having listened to local communities, we have ruled out changes to the planning system.
• We will support clean transport to ensure clean air, as well as setting strict new laws on air quality.

Yet this is now happening.

We know that there is war and turbulence around the world but reverting to the economics that caused this planetary disaster in the first place is surely not the answer. 

We are a nation of nature lovers and of pragmatists and we know that an environmentally-conscious economy is a healthy economy, so taking a bulldozer to the very thing that underpins prosperity –nature – could not be a more disastrous response.

When you take your head out of your hands (as I’ve had to many times this week), will you take a deep breath and fight with us to oppose this madness?

We know that nature is the very thing that sustains our lives by providing homes, food, water and wellbeing. Will you help us stand up for nature and smart, green investment, and against proposals that are gambling with the future of our planet? 

Sadly, we are not getting any positive reassurance from government to allay our fears – you may feel despondent and may have written many times before, but we know that MPs in the Berks, Bucks and Oxon area will be worried by the public response to this.

Please support the #DefendNature campaign by writing to or tweeting you MP.

Take action today