For many, this will be a five day working week for well, it seems like months!  School holidays, Easter, Royal Weddings and May Bank Holidays mean that some of us have forgotten what it is like to put in a full week's work.

But a season of big Westminster political announcements on the environment should keep us on our toes:

- the fourth carbon budget must be set by 30 June 2011.  This will set the cap on UK greenhouse gas emissions for the period 2023-2027.

- the UK National Ecosystem Assessment should be published in early June.  It will outline the state of our natural environment and demonstrate the contribution it makes to our well-being.

-The Natural Environment White Paper - the first for 20 years - should appear soon after.  It ought to outline the UK Government's ambition and plan for fulfilling the coalition agreement commitment to "protect wildlife and ... restore biodiversity"

- The England Biodiversity Strategy - apparently appearing two weeks after the NEWP - should provide more detail on how we will recover threatened species and habtiats.

Four big announcements and four big tests of this Government's green credentials.  The RSPB has a lot to say on each, so watch this space.

 

  • Redkite - we do expect the NEWP to cover UKOTs and the UK's international responsibilities eg to tropical forests.

    Gert - your words!!  But over the next few days I'll be offering some tests to see whether the publications live up to their billing.  

  • Reading your blog above Martin fills me with dread - only because it smacks of a lot of report writing by faceless individuals and very little of actually doing anything! A carbon budget - that will not be attainable, an NEA that will tell us what we already know - our wildlife is declining overall, a White Paper which will have no teeth, and a Strategy for which there won't be any money. Yes, I know, I'm being a tad negative, but you're right to say that we need to be on our toes and organisations like the RSPB need to exert as much pressure and influence as possible. No easy task, I grant you!

  • Certainly quite a few spaces to be watching in the next few weeks, Martin. I do hope the Government will not take too much of a parochial view on these important subjects, but I fear they might well do so. For example, it is vitally important that the latter three topics you list, address the situations in the UK's Overseas Territories, where many species are " right on the edge". Our Overseas Territories are, after all, part of the UK.

    Additionally, I hope the Government, in these publications, emphasises the need to work closely with our European partners and further afield on such key subjects as migratory birds.

    Also, our sadly depleted and ravaged marine ecosystems also need to be addressed.

    In other words I hope the "Greenest Government Ever" will not just draw a line around the shores of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and say all we have to do is work within these lines. Firstly, such an approach would not improve biodiversity in the long run, probably the reverse, and secondly the issues and problems are far wider than that.