We are at a critical stage in the planet’s history. It has been suggested that our impact on the earth has become so extreme that we are entering a new geological era that should be named after human beings (the so-called ‘Anthropocene’1). Environmental violence, taken here to mean the unsustainable use and extraction of natural resources in ways that push the planet past its carrying capacity and also damage human welfare,2 will reverberate for decades and even centuries to come. Climate change, in particular, represents an issue of intergenerational violence.3 Future generations will have done nothing to cause climate change – or its resultant droughts, floods and famines – but they will be forced to deal with its impacts. Environmental protection is similarly a question of international justice. Those states that are least able to adapt to climate change and have done the least to cause it – such as low-lying islands – will feel its effects most starkly. These effects are sure to impact upon developed states too, through mass migration pressures. If Europe has struggled to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis,4 imagine the pressures of responding to even greater numbers of climate refugees. Finally, as well as intergenerational and international justice for humans, environmental neglect can wreak havoc on non-human species.5 Due to air and water pollution, habitat destruction and temperature change, extreme biodiversity loss continues unabated. Protecting the environment is consequently vital for human and non-human life to be able to flourish. Yet in times of economic crisis and austerity, environmental policies are often first in line for cuts, as exemplified by former UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, apparently instructing policy-makers to ‘get rid of all the green crap’ in November 2013.6 Austerity-led deregulation of environmental policies, to secure efficiency gains and cost minimisation for businesses at the expense of the protection of the environment, is a clear manifestation of state-led environmental violence.
In this chapter, we use two case studies, the EU and the UK, to trace the way in which austerity and the pursuit of deregulation, or so-called ‘better regulation’, has led to a downgrading of the environment (see also Chapter 13 by Steve Tombs). This deregulatory agenda is based upon streamlining legislation, to ensure that policies – including environmental protection – are not too burdensome for governments and business,7 even if removing them risks environmental or social harm. We begin by analysing the ways in which the environment has fallen down the EU’s list of priorities, as part of a broader focus on ‘jobs and growth’ and ‘better regulation’.8 These events demonstrate a significant shift in the EU’s environmental trajectory, which had previously been described as inherently ambitious and expansionist in nature.9 We then review how the UK has neglected and even rolled back climate change policies, as well as seeking to sell off much of the nation’s forests, under the auspices of the austerity agenda. Finally, we conclude by touching upon ‘Brexit’, which is sure to shape environmental policy in the EU and UK alike for years to come. Throughout, we demonstrate that environmental protection has been stymied, at best, under austerity.
The EU increasingly positioned itself as a global environmental pioneer throughout the 1990s and 2000s, particularly regarding climate change,10 providing the EU with a ‘soft power’ reputation with which to forge its global identity. Under Commission President José Manuel Barroso (2004–14), the win-win objective of ‘green growth’ dominated Commission thinking around the environment.11 However, the narrative of the environment being a ‘win-win’ opportunity appears to have been replaced by a ‘zero-sum’ framing that prioritises the economy. In October 2014, in a context of austerity across Europe, Jean-Claude Juncker was selected as Commission President, having been the pro-austerity President of the EuroGroup between 2011 and 2014. One of Juncker’s first acts was to reorganise the European Commission in ways that deprioritised environmental protection in favour of economic growth. Hence, he merged the Climate and Energy portfolios together,12 and appointed a new vice-president responsible for Energy to whom the new Climate and Energy Commissioner would report, signalling that energy security was taking priority over climate change. The new Climate Commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, was also a controversial choice, due to his past as a director of two oil companies.13 Meanwhile, the Environment brief was merged with Fisheries and Maritime Affairs14 and the new Commissioner was given a clear remit to deregulate environmental policies.15 The election of the European Parliament in May 2014 was also shaped by austerity politics in European states with a lurch towards more populist parties, such as the French Front National. In the UK, marginalised voters gave the Eurosceptic and climate-sceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) the largest UK delegation.
The policy implications of these structural changes are already being felt. The Circular Economy package – designed to ‘close the loop’ of product life cycles – was postponed in December 2014. The revised package proposed in June 2016 featured weaker environmental targets than the previous version. For example, for municipal waste, the new target is to achieve a recycling level of 65 per cent by 2030, rather than 70 per cent, while for packaging it is 75 per cent rather than 80 per cent.16 In addition, the EU appears to be reducing spending in certain environmental policy areas, for example, it will not ring-fence funds to pay for projects that boost energy efficiency in buildings,17 instead encouraging the private sector to decide where funding should be allocated.
The Commission is also pursuing deregulation via its REFIT (Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme) agenda, which seeks to reduce ‘regulatory burdens’ for businesses.18 The assumptions underpinning the description of existing legislation as ‘burdens’ is clear; onerous regulations are inefficient and may hinder jobs and growth. Pieces of environmental legislation that do not appear to be particularly burdensome to the economy are included within the review, suggesting that a wide range of environmental policies may be affected by it. For instance, the Birds and Habitats Directives were evaluated by the Commission to determine whether they were ‘fit for purpose’.19 This process, although in its infancy, may indicate a new trajectory of European policy-making, in which existing pieces of legislation are weakened and rolled back.
In the UK, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition elected in 2010 claimed they would be the ‘greenest government ever’. Yet we saw a range of policies that suggested the opposite. The first sign was the mooted possibility of selling 150,000 hectares of forest and woodland in England in 2010, in order to secure budget savings for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra argued that the outcome would ‘be a new approach to ownership and management of woodlands and forests, with a reducing role for the State and a growing role for the private sector and civil society’.20 In doing so, the assumptions underpinning austerity – namely, a smaller state and a bigger role for the market – were outlined explicitly. However, due to significant popular opposition, the proposals were abandoned in July 2012, following the findings of an expert panel. The UK is also rolling back existing legislation – or undergoing ‘policy dismantling’.21 In particular, climate policy ambition appears to have fallen since a peak in 2008, when the UK created the world’s first Climate Change Act.22 Here, the election in 2015 of a Conservative government – freed from the constraints of coalition with the more environmentally inclined Liberal Democrats – was significant. In its first eight weeks of office, the new government rolled back a host of existing pro-climate policies.23 Subsidies for onshore wind were ended entirely in June 2015, on the grounds that the technology was now mature enough to survive without state support.24 Instead, the government has encouraged fracking (see Chapter 16 by Will Jackson, Helen Monk and Joanna Gilmore) and nuclear energy.25 Even more explicitly linked to austerity were the decisions to remove the guaranteed level of subsidy for biomass conversions, and the launch of a consultation on controlling solar power subsidies. Both of these polices were rolled back ‘to ensure [that] consumers are protected from higher energy bills’.26 In 2014, 2.38 million households – or 10.6 per cent of all households – in England suffered from fuel poverty (see Chapter 9 by Ruth London). As such, rather than ensuring that citizens had enough money to cover heating costs, austerity has ensured that millions could not afford to stay warm, and the government’s solution has been to weaken nascent renewable energy programmes.
The Conservative government also reined in existing policies for promoting more climate-friendly housing. Household energy consumption accounts for more than a quarter of UK carbon dioxide emissions.27 A decade-long aspiration to ensure that all new homes would be carbon neutral by 2016 was axed in July 2015, leading the Liberal Democrat former Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, to suggest that the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, ‘may as well hug a coal power station’.28 The flagship Green Deal, launched in 2013, was also ended in July 2015. Although the scheme had struggled to garner much support from the public,29 it provided a means for individuals to take out a government-supported loan in order to insulate their homes more efficiently. The dismantling of this policy therefore worsened both fuel poverty and climate change alike.
Moreover, in June 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU. Although the government moved quickly to adopt the fifth carbon budget (which sets targets for CO2 up until 2032), once Theresa May became the new prime minister in July 2016, she rapidly disbanded the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), replacing it instead with a Department for Energy, Business and Industrial Strategy. This departmental change was a clear indication that climate change had been downgraded on the UK’s political agenda. The UK’s exit from the EU has also raised fears amongst environmental campaigners that areas where the UK has been forced by the EU to take action, such as on air and water quality, now face the risk of weaker standards, with cost being used as an excuse for weaker policies. Here, we see an irony – on the one hand, the EU is clearly pursuing an austerity agenda. However, for those who work in this sector, the EU is clearly regarded as a vehicle for safeguarding minimum environmental standards in the UK. Indeed, some environmental campaigners are greeting Brexit with relief as the UK has been in the vanguard of efforts to block new EU regulation and push the deregulatory agenda at the European level, thus weakening Europe-wide standards. One consequence of Brexit may therefore be weaker domestic standards in the UK and the adoption of stronger standards in some areas in the EU. However, it is important not to overstate the latter likelihood, as the UK is not the only reluctant environmentalist within the EU.
In summary, since the rise of austerity, we have seen a clear shift away from previous policy trajectories that prioritised environmental protection. Regulation aimed at ensuring environmental outcomes has been increasingly seen as a burden, particularly on businesses, with the result that existing legislation has been postponed, reviewed or even dismantled. Brexit could exacerbate these trends still further, and may worsen the environmental performance of the UK. The result has been that environmental violence is tacitly encouraged by austerity-driven policies. In response, it is vital that this environmental violence is halted. One way is to reframe environmental protection as a means of providing jobs and growth, as well as being worthy of protection in its own right, as a matter of international justice and intergenerational survival.
Websites were last accessed 23 December 2016.
1. Paul J. Crutzen, ‘Geology of mankind’, Nature, 415 (23), 2002, 23.
2. For example, Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘Climate change, environmental violence and genocide’, International Journal of Human Rights, 18.(3), 2014, 265–80.
3. Edward Page, ‘Intergenerational justice and climate change’, Political Studies, 47 (1), 199, 53–66.
4. Daniel Byman and Sloane Speakman, ‘The Syrian refugee crisis: bad and worse options’, Washington Quarterly, 39 (2), 2016, 45–60.
5. Julius Kapembwa and Joshua Wells, ‘Climate justice for wildlife: a rights-based account’, in Gabriel Trindade and Andrew Woodhall (eds), Intervention or Protest: Acting for Non-human Animals, Wilmington, NC: Vernon Press, 2016, pp. 359–90.
6. George Eaton, ‘No. 10 refuses to deny Cameron call to “get rid of all the green crap”’, New Statesman, 21 November 2013, available at: www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/no-10-refuses-deny-cameron-call-get-rid-all-green-crap
7. European Council, ‘Better regulation to strengthen competitiveness’, 2016, available at: www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/05/26-conclusions-better-regulation/
8. Sajjad Karim, ‘All EU institutions must embrace “better” regulation’, EurActiv, 2015, available at: www.euractiv.com/section/trade-society/opinion/all-eu-institutions-must-embrace-better-regulation/
9. Albert Weale, ‘European environmental policy by stealth: the dysfunctionality of functionalism?’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 17 (1), 1999, 37–51.
10. R. Daniel Kelemen, ‘Globalizing European Union environmental policy’. Journal of European Public Policy, 17 (3), 2010, 335–49.
11. Ed King, ‘EU chief Barroso eyes 40% emissions reduction target’, Climate Home, 2013, available at: www.climatechangenews.com/2013/02/01/eu-chief-barroso-eyes-40-emissions-reductions-target/
12. Ecaterina Casinge, ‘Parliament reacts to Juncker’s plan to merge energy and climate portfolios’, Euractiv, 2014, available at: www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/parliament-reacts-to-juncker-s-plan-to-merge-energy-and-climate-portfolios/
13. See the Guardian report, available at: www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/09/former-oil-mogul-confirmed-as-eu-climate-and-energy-commissioner
14. Beatrice Denis, ‘Vella elusive on fisheries and environmental policy’, Euractiv, 2014, available at: www.euractiv.com/section/sustainable-dev/news/vella-elusive-on-fisheries-and-environmental-policy/
15. Village, ‘Eurout of line on the environment’, 2014, available at: http://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2014/10/eurout-of-line-on-the-environment/
16. European Parliament, ‘Circular economy: revision of waste legislation’, 2016, available at: www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/573291/EPRS_BRI(2016)573291_EN.pdf
17. James Crisp, ‘Katainen: private sector will decide if EU money goes to energy efficiency’, Euractiv, 2015, available at: www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/katainen-private-sector-will-decide-if-eu-money-goes-to-energy-efficiency/
18. European Commission, ‘The need for better regulation’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/better-regulation-why-and-how_en, undated
19. Ibid.
20. UK Government, ‘Forestry in England: a new strategic approach’, 2010, available at: www.gov.uk/government/news/forestry-in-england-a-new-strategic-approach/
21. Michael W. Bauer, Andrew Jordan, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Adrienne Héritier (eds), Dismantling Public Policy: Preferences, Strategies, and Effects, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
22. Neil Carter, ‘The politics of climate change in the UK’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5 (3), 2014, 423–33.
23. Adam Vaughan and Terry Macalister, ‘The nine green policies killed off by the Tory government’, Guardian, 24 July 2015.
24. Amber Rudd, ‘Statement on ending subsidies for onshore wind’, 2015, available at: www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-on-ending-subsidies-for-onshore-wind
25. Adam Vaughan, ‘Solar and wind “cheaper than new nuclear” by the time Hinkley is built’, Guardian, 11 August 2016.
26. UK Government, ‘Controlling the cost of renewable energy’, 2015, available at: www.gov.uk/government/news/controlling-the-cost-of-renewable-energy
27. Jason Palmer and Ian Cooper, ‘United Kingdom housing energy fact file’, 2012, available at: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/201167/uk_housing_fact_file_2012.pdf
28. Vaughan and Macalister, ‘The nine green policies’.
29. UK Government, ‘Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO): monthly statistics’, 2015, available at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/green-deal-and-energy-company-obligation-eco-monthly-statistics-july-2015