Growth Plan would trash the natural world we depend on for our survival

Letter published by the West Sussex County Times 29 September 2022

Sir,

“The natural world supports all life on earth, and its collapse would precipitate our own”

The Government’s Growth Plan 2022 makes clear its intent to trash vital environmental laws and in so doing is cancelling the previous pivotal commitment made July 2021 in its response to ‘The Economics of Biodiversity. The Dasgupta Review’ to: “(1) delivering a ‘nature positive’ future, in which we leave the environment in a better state than we found it, and reverse biodiversity loss globally by 2030; and (2) ensuring economic and financial decision-making, and the systems and institutions that underpin it, supports the delivery of that nature positive future”.

No matter that the then Government agreed with the Dasgupta Review’s fundamental conclusion that “nature, and the biodiversity that underpins it, ultimately sustains our economies, livelihoods and well-being, and so our decisions must take into account the true value of the goods and services we derive from it”.

(The Economics of Biodiversity. The Dasgupta Review. Government Response, Presented to Parliament by the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, July 2021)

How will this impact on Sussex and its ability to combat Climate Change?

Have Sussex’s MPs read the Dasgupta Review?

Have they examined the ONS’s UK natural capital accounts: 2021, which estimates ‘the financial and societal value of natural resources to people in the UK’?

They should note the advice therein that “The natural world supports all life on earth, and its collapse would precipitate our own”.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Roger F Smith

Trustee CPRE Sussex