Business group urges Government to strengthen environmental standards

Aldersgate Group report warns the downturn should not be excuse for relaxing goals

Two of Britain’s leading environmental consultancies, Enviros and Atkins, are among a coalition of businesses, the Environment Agency, environmental NGOs and politicians calling on the UK government to resist the temptation to relax environmental regulation during economic recession and, instead, to raise its environmental ambitions.

Launching the Aldersgate Group’s Green Foundations 2009 report, Enviros’ director Peter Young, who is chair of the group, reminded his audience at the House of Commons of the continuing need for business and industry “to argue the case for tackling climate change and resource depletion” in order to ensure that government is left in no doubt that voices demanding environmental deregulation do not speak for all actors within the economic sectors they represent.

Echoing this sentiment, Environment Agency chairman Lord Chris Smith said that green technology and renewable energy “offer the Keynesian stimulus to the economy that the government is looking for”.

With a “broad church” membership that includes Tesco and the RSPB as well as Christian Aid and United Utilities, the Aldersgate Group presents the Government with five arguments in its latest report. First, that long-term economic success relies on a healthy environment and sustainable resource use. It urges the government not to allow “the ecological services so fundamental to human well being” to be treated as “off-balance sheet items”, akin to those that undermined the stability of the banking sector.

Second, the government is asked to use environmental regulation to raise the environmental performance of UK businesses in order to bring it in line with Germany, France and Japan. An increasing volume of evidence exists to suggest that good environmental performance “translates into tangible economic benefits and is a major source of competitive advantage”, argues the report.

New business opportunities can be created through stronger and better environmental regulation, is the report’s third argument. Emphasising this point, Lord Smith repeated his comments at the Agency's recent annual conference that the UK had “missed the boat” in the development of wind energy technology but that government now has a chance to assist UK tidal and wave power companies to gain “first mover advantage” in what will become an important global industry (Environment Analyst 24 Nov 08).

Too often policy appraisals “downplay the economic benefits that can be derived from setting high environmental standards”, argues the report, and it urges the Government to become more sophisticated and more accurate in its assessment of the environmental costs and benefits of its policies.

In addition, the Government must not allow the “better regulation” agenda to degenerate into a deregulation agenda. Deregulation today, it says, “puts at risk future wealth and prosperity”.

• Report: Green Foundations 2009