5 minute read
How green is our recovery?
Ben Brown is head of policy and insight at the Landscape Institute
The UK is now officially in its worst ever recession on record. GDP shrank 20.4% in April alone – more than twenty times the largest monthly drop during the Great Recession in 2008 – and is on track for its biggest decline in 100 years.
This isn’t confined to the UK. Governments around the world are scrambling to put recovery plans in place to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, with somewhere around $10 trillion of stimulus packages pledged so far. The UK Government announced around £160 billion in spending at its unprecedented Summer Statement, and promised further announcements later in the autumn.
In spite of the pandemic’s devastating economic consequences, though, it’s had a hugely positive effect on overall CO2 emissions. And just as economies begin to once again pick up pace, emissions are starting to rebound too.
Government stimulus packages can either seek to address this, or they can worsen it. Though stimulus tends to be ‘value neutral’ about the types of businesses it supports, it has in the past often favoured high-carbon sectors. In the UK, industries such as aviation, automotive and oil and gas services have been among the largest recipients of Bank of England loans. If government investment doesn’t explicitly target climate change, it will have major consequences for our ability to meet our 2050 net zero obligations.
It is now widely accepted that the coronavirus comeback cannot ignore the fact that we have only a few years remaining to address climate change and biodiversity loss. An unsustainable recovery will only create new problems further down the road – not least the health inequalities that COVID-19 has exposed, and which climate change will only worsen.
At the macroeconomic level, the UK has so far been relatively green, by comparison with the poor approaches taken by other countries, many of whom have heavily deregulated and invested in high carbon activity. Though we do lag behind some, like France, who have made high environmental spending commitments.
The UK government’s announcements so far include accelerating capital spend on infrastructure, housing, and public realm, some of which has been directed to green infrastructure: most notably the proposed new Mayfield Park in Manchester and the ‘Grey to Green’ project in Leeds City Centre. They’ve also allocated some money for direct environmental improvements, such as a £40 million Green Jobs Challenge Fund.3 But the problem is much larger than that, and the solution must be too. Climate change isn’t just a concern for the green energy sector – it demands a structural change across the whole economy, including how we invest in, design, and manage our built environment.
As well as addressing climate change and kickstarting the economy, this recovery provides an opportunity to address wider health and social inequalities. Issues such as air pollution (COVID-19 is, after all, a respiratory disease) won’t improve with a stimulus package that prioritises grey infrastructure, roads, and windowless flats. The lockdown emphasised the huge value of green space: parks became a lifeline for millions, championed by politicians and scientists (including the Prime Minister and each of the devolved nation’s Chief Medical Officers) as key to people’s health.
Working with its members, the Landscape Institute has published a Greener Recovery paper that sets out how landscape can be an integral part of the UK’s recovery from coronavirus. The paper covers five top-level principles for action:
1. Take a natural capital approach to new infrastructure and housing
Public money should not fund unsustainable, unhealthy, poorlydesigned places. By taking a natural capital approach,4 even a modest reallocation of the money spent on grey infrastructure could bring enormous benefits, by investing in urban greening, parks, SuDS, active transport, etc. Recent research suggests that a £5.5 billion investment in urban green infrastructure, for example, would generate over £200 billion of physical and mental health benefits.5
Signs of life in the London Wall.
© Paul Lincoln
2. Invest in maintenance and renewal of existing places
To meet the UK’s climate obligations, we must make the most of the places we’ve already got. During COVID-19, we’ve seen a huge transformation in the way we use public spaces like parks and high streets, and the way we travel to them. Reinventing these places as green, healthy and accessible spaces will ensure their long-term sustainability, but only if we also secure resource funding for maintenance, not just capital expenditure.
3. Set higher and fairer standards for green space
Economically deprived communities are less likely to live near quality green spaces. 2.6 million people do not live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Black people are nearly four times likelier than white people to have no access to outdoor space at home. This isn’t just about the recreational benefits of green space – as our cities heat up and flooding worsens, it’s increasingly becoming an issue of climate justice. Some countries and cities are setting ambitious standards, such as Arnhem in Denmark, who have minimum grass-to-concrete ratios. The UK should do the same.
4. Invest in natural solutions to climate change
A healthy natural environment is a bedrock for all economic activity, and climate change puts this at risk. As well as ensuring that its housing and infrastructure investment is green, the government needs to invest in nature directly. The Natural Capital Committee recently reported that woodland planted on the outskirts of urban settlements, for example, would deliver nearly £550 million per year in benefits such as recreation, carbon capture and biodiversity. None of this is possible without passing a strong Environment Bill, ensuring that we maintain EU-level protections for nature.
5. Create a step-change in green skills, digital, and data
Lockdown has been disruptive. But as our economy emerges from it, we can work to ensure that this disruption leads to positive change. Simply ‘getting Britain building again’, with nostrings-attached investment, will result in us reverting to all the old ways of working and the same poor outcomes. COVID-19 provides an opportunity to make the built environment sector more digital, efficient and productive. To do so, an investment in people and skills is needed.
Download our 'Greener Recovery - Delivering a sustainable recovery from COVID-19' policy paper here
https://landscapewpstorage01. blob.core.windows.net/ www-landscapeinstituteorg/2020/09/12332-greenerrecovery-v6.pdf
