Lord Zac Goldsmith has announced his resignation, furiously accusing the Government of ‘apathy’ over environmental issues.
‘But this government’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable.
So when you asked me to stay on as minister for the international environment, I of course accepted. I did so with a view to guarding the progress we had seen in recent years on the international environment, and to building on a record of international leadership that has been so warmly welcomed around the world.
As a direct consequence of our environmental leadership, we have seen countries previously ambivalent towards the UK stepping up to support us on numerous unrelated issues. We often find ourselves invited to regional environmental summits as the only ‘outsider’ country present. Since then the UK has been the driving force behind successful global efforts. We led calls to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by the end of this decade, a goal that was agreed at the Biodiversity COP in Montreal last year where the UK did more than almost any other country to make it a historic success.
These and other funds are world-class and have leveraged a wave of financial support from other countries and philanthropists. We have committed to restore our peatlands and plant trees on an unprecedented scale and we are transforming our land subsidy system to support the environment. We have also taken steps to address our international environmental footprint, including new laws stopping the import to the UK of agricultural commodities grown on illegally deforested land.
But I have been horrified as, bit by bit, we have abandoned these commitments – domestically and on the world stage. The Kept Animals Bill has been ditched, despite your promises. Our efforts on a wide range of domestic environmental issues have simply ground to a standstill. This is a promise, remember, that has been consistently repeated by prime ministers in the past four years, including by you, and for good reason.
The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our Prime Minister, are simply uninterested. That signal, or lack of it, has trickled down through Whitehall and caused a kind of paralysis.
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