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Abstract

A short, giddy period, perhaps 2019 to 2022, marked the high-water mark of environmentalism in the UK: in just three years we committed in law to reach net zero by 2050, passed the Environment Act and helped lead the global charge for 30x30. When COP26 met in Glasgow in November 2021, Ipsos polling found the environment had become the public’s single biggest concern, named by 40%, the highest level since records began in 1988.

Fast forward five years and the Conservative Party has pledged to repeal the Climate Change Act, Reform has promised to 'scrap net zero' and Labour, which spent its short-lived Starmer era pitting growth against nature, has approved the Jackdaw gas field and remains committed to a third runway at Heathrow. Meanwhile, the environment as an issue has slipped from 40% to 13% in Ipsos polling.

This lecture brings an insider's view of the UK environmental movement to ask how the consensus on climate and nature unravelled so quickly, why the same story is playing out from Washington to Brasília, how the UK environmental movement is planning to fight the war differently and whether it will be enough to win it.

Speak biography

background is as a lawyer; Senior vice president for Thomson Reuters until 2018, taking on a wide range of corporate and commercial work and running their global compliance and regulatory programmes. After Thomson Reuters, she combined a consultancy role with the law firm, Taylor Wessing, with a portfolio of non-executive roles.

Jane has been a governor for the College of Law, the Legal Education Foundation and the University of Lincoln. More recently, she has taken on appointments in the environmental sector, and is currently a trustee for the RSPB and Chair of their England Advisory Committee and trustee for the Green Alliance and the Foundation for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.