Time will tell if Coffey is an enemy or friend of wildlife
IN the recent chaos surrounding the Government there has not been much comment on environmental policy.
A month ago I reported on the then plan to sweep away existing safeguards for wildlife in particular and environmental protection in general.
However, the new Environment Minister, Ranil Jayawarenda, has already been replaced by Theresa Coffey.
With the bill to remove hundreds of what were EU laws and regulations making its way through Parliament, there are calls for a rethink from all the major conservation bodies, including the RSPB, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts, and serious misgiving within the farming community.
A particularly pernicious element of the bill is what is called ‘sunset law’, whereby if something is not repealed or replaced by the end of 2023 it will be scrapped by default.
This may leave insufficient time to review, rewrite and replace current safeguards and obligations on industry and agriculture.
We have yet to see where Theresa Coffey stands on all of this.
While a junior minister in the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) she went on record as saying, in relation to Defra’s 2020 Nature Strategy: “This is a really exciting moment for our natural environment.
“In harmony with our climate change strategy (it) will help us both achieve net zero and save our planet’.
This is a welcome sentiment but even so her appointment has not generally been welcomed in the nature conservation community.
Coffey’s leadership of what in the modern world is effectively the fourth great department of state alongside the Treasury, the Home Office and the Foreign Office will be crucial to the recovery and future prospects for our wildlife and its habitats.
Her responsibilities range over pollution control, air and water quality, protected areas for nature, such as national parks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and regulation of the development and infrastructure industries when their activities threaten the natural world.
Two early tests for her will be a forthcoming statement about whether or not to continue with the planned new scheme to reward farmers for nature-friendly practices, and the soon to be announced update on targets, including those relating to nature, in the Environment Act.
These have been criticised for not being ambitious enough. We will soon know whether the new secretary of state is a champion or an enemy of our precious wildlife.
With the bill to remove hundreds of EU laws making its way through Parliament, there are calls for a rethink from all the major conservation bodies