According to a report undertaken by former head of the Sustainable Development Commission, Jonathan Porritt, the UK Government will fail to live up to its promise to create the ‘greenest Government ever’.
The report, commissioned by environmental organisation Friends of The Earth, examines the Government’s green record during its first in office.
After looking at 77 policies, Porritt found little or no progress in more than three quarters of them.
In the final conclusion of the report, the former Friends of The Earth Director states:
‘…….it is clear that the ‘growth at all costs’ lobby has won out over the advocates of ‘sustainable economic development’ – particularly Chris Huhne. That in itself is discouraging but is compounded by some much more problematic positioning on the part of the Coalition around more ideologically-charged issues like deregulation and “shrinking the size of the state”.
That positioning (anti-regulation, hostile to planning, favouring the private sector, shrinking the state, etc) makes it significantly harder to deliver on the ‘Greenest Government Ever’ pledge, let alone to put sustainable development anywhere near the heart of government.’
He continues:
‘It is, I’m afraid, unavoidably depressing to see just how rapidly things have gone backwards since May 2010. Instead of having a really strong story to tell at the Rio + 20 Conference in a year’s time, having built up an internationally-recognised framework for sustainable development in the 10 years running up to last year’s General Election, our contribution in Rio – as things stand at the moment – will be humiliatingly insubstantial.’
