Light pollution impacts on humans and other species and on the planet in terms of energy consumption and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. It deserves a place in the Environment Bill. Continue reading “Buglife and artificial light”
Category: Ecology and animal protection
People need wild spaces and green spaces and other species need them too. Sharing our world with other species is part of the joy of being alive, when we cage and abuse them, or destroy their habitat, we demean ourselves in the process
Jenny works to increase green spaces and protect animals and wild space
Read on to see her latest posts on this these topics
You cannot separate biodiversity from climate
Lord Caithness has made the classic Conservative error of separating biodiversity from climate. It is all interconnected: you cannot talk about either without accepting that each has an impact on the other. Every noble Lord must understand that we have a climate emergency, and therefore this government Environment Bill is not good enough. We all know that–it is why there are so many amendments at Report. It is our job to improve the Bill and it is the Government’s job to listen and, I hope, accept our improvements. Continue reading “You cannot separate biodiversity from climate”
My amendment 20 to the Animal Welfare Bill
I would like to see a strong, broad-based animal sentience committee that conducts deep analysis of all government policy to ensure that its impact on animals has been properly considered. I would much rather that the committee looked at everything in the round than sporadically look at piecemeal bits of policy. The former seems the right way to go, especially when the Bill is premised on the fact that these animals are sentient beings with the capacity to feel, perceive and experience. Why any scrutiny body would be reduced to the position of seeking permission from those it is scrutinising to actually do the scrutinising is beyond me, but then there are those who believe in the divine right of kings and see scrutiny of the Government as a bad thing.
Continue reading “My amendment 20 to the Animal Welfare Bill”
We still need a ban on Fracking
I have tabled this amendment with a view to banning fracking once and for all. In doing so, I want to celebrate all the hard work of campaigners and activists across the country who delivered massive opposition against this dirty and dangerous polluting industry, often in the face of poor policy decisions by the Government and the fracking industry’s might-is-right attempts to quash them. In particular, I applaud the Preston New Road campaign in Lancashire. It was a thousand days of protest by the anti-fracking Nanas, a bunch of mainly older women led by Tina Rothery. They fought so hard in the face of well-financed and rather nasty, threatening behaviour by Cuadrilla. Continue reading “We still need a ban on Fracking”
The adoption of remote electronic monitoring of fishing vessels
We discussed remote electronic monitoring when considering the Fisheries Bill and the House of Lords were able to get the Minister to put a firm commitment in support of it on the record. Lord Gardiner of Kimble, stated: “The Government are clear that we will be consulting on increasing the use of REM in the first half of 2021, with implementation following that. I am not in a position to give a precise date today for when this will be implemented, but I can absolutely say—and I want to put this on the record—that the Government are absolutely seized of the importance of REM.”—[Official Report, 12/11/20; col. 1174.]
Unfortunately, things do not seem to be progressing particularly quickly. The latest update I could find on the GOV.UK website, from 7 May, says: “We’ve considered all the submissions and will continue to use the evidence provided to inform further thinking on the use of remote electronic monitoring in England. We’ll engage more with stakeholders in the near future around the topics that were highlighted in this call for evidence.”
This language does not reflect the previous enthusiasm of Lord Gardiner of Kimble, so I asked the Minister to confirm that the Government remain “absolutely seized of the importance of REM”
Continue reading “The adoption of remote electronic monitoring of fishing vessels”
Fundamentally inadequate and incoherent
I do not understand how we can keep on passing legislation that does not tie up. Without amendments to the Environment Bill we are at risk of seeing our seas and fisheries as being separate from the rest of our environment and all our ecological activities. This sort of silo thinking would undermine the realities of the inseparable ecosystems and natural systems. I would be particularly concerned and upset if an upland authority had a nature recovery strategy that failed to take into account what was happening to its downstream neighbours and, ultimately, to the seas where the watercourses will end up. An Environment Bill that allows for that eventuality is fundamentally inadequate and incoherent, with no basic understanding of the environment.
We need these amendments because the alternative is that in a few years’ time the Government of the day will have to bring in new legislation to try to patch up these incoherencies, with perhaps a decade of lost opportunity to heal the environment in that time. It is much better that we work together now to get it right. Continue reading “Fundamentally inadequate and incoherent”
Environment Bill Committee Stage Day 6 – Planning
I know that the Green Party’s 450 or so councillors sitting on over 140 local authorities, along with thousands of other environmentally aware councillors from other political parties, would be able to achieve a huge amount with these new powers—in particular, the ability to prohibit inappropriate activities that would be detrimental to biodiversity. Continue reading “Environment Bill Committee Stage Day 6 – Planning”
Environment Bill Committee Day 6 – Water
We currently use water in an extremely illogical way. Clean, drinkable water is flushed down the loo when there is a really obvious alternative: to not use it. The separation and capture of grey water should be routine, and the Government should make it a requirement in building regs, because the benefits are so blindingly clear.
When we combine the separation and reuse of grey water with the separation of sewage from drainage, we have a much more sustainable water system. I hope that not very long into the future we will look back on the idea of using clean water to flush our toilets and then mixing it with rainwater, before spending huge amounts of money getting the sewage back out, as illogical and disgusting. Continue reading “Environment Bill Committee Day 6 – Water”
Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill – An Animal Sentience Committee
I have tabled nine amendments to the Bill to ensure that the animal sentience committee will be a properly functioning entity that can support a meaningful improvement in recognising the sentience of animals, and what that should mean for government policy.
My first amendment, Amendment 6, starts the process of improving the committee by explicitly stating its purpose. It seems a basic drafting failure that the purpose of the committee is not laid out. It seems rather strange to have it absent from the Bill, so here I am suggesting an option. If somebody wanted a public body to achieve a purpose, I think that they would specify that purpose in the enabling legislation. My concern is that, as the Bill is currently drafted, the animal sentience committee will not be able to achieve much. We have heard Lords use particular phrases about why animal sentience is not in our legislation: somebody said it just fell out and somebody else said it was dropped by accident. To me, that is a rewriting of history, because I remember that the Government took it out deliberately. Continue reading “Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill – An Animal Sentience Committee”
Environment Bill committee Stage Day 5 – Waste water
This is one of the groups of amendments which really ought to be just swallowed wholesale by the Government. It has some excellent amendments in it.
Amendment 161 emphasises the importance of nature-based solutions and other ways of separating our sewage from the clean water that falls on the surface as rain. It is absolutely absurd that we mix these two things together, instantly turning clean rainwater into raw sewage that, as far as we are concerned, is good for nothing. There are a great many nature-based solutions for treating sewage water.
If I had to pick one amendment as the most crucial, it would have to be Amendment 166 tabled by the Duke of Wellington, which sets the essential target of zero discharges of untreated sewage into rivers. This is the level of ambition that we should be working towards as a matter of urgency.
Continue reading “Environment Bill committee Stage Day 5 – Waste water”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 