Dear Mr Reed, welcome to your new job. It all gets real now.
Yesterday you set out your five priorities for Defra;
- clean rivers
- zero waste economy
- food security
- nature recovery
- reducing flood risk
These are good as headlines and demonstrate more strategic thought than we have seen from the Tories in 14 years.
Everybody has been rushing to congratulate you on your job and say that they are looking forward to working with you – you don’t need to pay much attention to that, they all want things from you. Rather different was Wild Justice’s welcome – click here – which said that they hoped you wouldn’t make unlawful decisions but if you did you’d be added to the list of Defra Secretaries of State who would face legal challenges (I speak as a co-director of Wild Justice).
But the world will be congratulating you, and so will the electorate, if in the next five years you make significant progress on each of your five priorities.
You must know this, but land use is a large part of the solutions to at least three of your five priorities. If Labour builds houses in the wrong places then flood risk will worsen and the cost of insurance and government-funded adaptation will rise. Clean rivers will only come about by regulating both the water and farming industries – the River Wye isn’t polluted with human shit but with chicken shit and run-off of agricultural chemicals.
You may have to make a difficult decision between land-sharing and land-sparing. Can nature recovery happen if food production increases even further without some land being set aside for nature? That might be some land heading towards the rewilding end of the spectrum. There are some easy decisions – the uplands are unimportant in food production terms and yet could be wonderful for nature, flood relief and clean water so they should head in the wilder direction.
Good headlines, particularly since they weren’t clear in the manifesto. Good luck with delivery. More on that tomorrow.
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