The UK must ‘raise its ambition’ and seize the opportunities of a net-zero economy, a cross-party commission has said.
The IPPR Environmental Justice Commission was set up to explore how the UK could become a net-zero economy while improving people’s lives and the health of the natural world. Commissioners are drawn from a wide range of ages, experience and backgrounds.
Its first report urges the UK to raise ambition and ‘secure greater action’ on climate and nature around the world.
The commission says that a net-zero economy would enable the UK to unlock new high-skilled and high-paid jobs, develop dynamic businesses and improve the health and wellbeing for all citizens.
It also warns that failure to move further quickly risks the UK missing its climate targets, worsening existing inequalities and emerging from one major global shock only to ‘accelerate headlong’ into another.
The report calls on the UK government to make its domestic ambition over the next decade align with 1.5°C and net-zero, which must be achieved entirely through domestic action.
It also says the government must audit all its activities, policies, rules and decision-making, to ensure they conform with the UK’s obligations under the Paris Agreement.
Co-chair Caroline Lucas MP said: ‘The good news is that decarbonising our economy and restoring nature offers us a vital opportunity to fix an economic model that is not only driving environmental destruction, but also failing the vast majority of people across the UK, as the fall-out from Covid-19 has so brutally exposed.
‘We can build back better – but only if we embed an agenda of rapid decarbonisation within a broader social and economic justice agenda, and ensure that those communities most affected by change have the power to lead and shape it.’
Read the full report here.
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