Environmental Audit Committee backs a National Nature Service

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has called for climate and nature recovery to be prioritised in the economic recovery from Covid-19.

In a new report, Growing back better: putting nature and net zero at the heart of the economic recovery, the EAC warned climate change and biodiversity collapse may deliver an even greater crisis than we are facing today if appropriate action is not taken.

One of the report’s recommendations is that the nature recovery network the Government has promised “must not be an afterthought established after other infrastructure is built. Nature recovery must be integral to the Government’s infrastructure plans”.

It also said the idea of a National Nature Service should be piloted – a Wildlife and Countryside Link idea for an employment and training scheme to provide work for tens of thousands of people turning around nature’s decline.

Other recommendations centred on carbon taxes, green transport, home energy efficiency, development of a hydrogen strategy, VAT reductions on repair services tax and incentives to encourage more take-up of ultra-low emission vehicles.

The Committee said: “While the Prime Minister's Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution points in the right direction, it is not yet investible and underlying strategies need to be published rapidly to give industry confidence. The report calls for the Government to front-load its investment in areas such energy efficiency, the circular economy, climate adaptation and nature recovery, to counter rising unemployment by creating green jobs. The EAC heard that this investment will provide economic multipliers in terms of jobs and improved productivity and will offer wider benefits such as cleaner air and warmer homes.”

EAC chair Philip Dunne commented: “There will be no vaccine against runaway climate change, and it is our responsibility now, using the opportunity of the economic recovery, to set the UK on track for net-zero.”