Jon Freeman
Assistant Secretary
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
Third Floor
5-8 The Sanctuary
Westminster
London SW1P 3JS
Thank you for your invitation to comment on the RCEP’s short list of topics for future study. The UK Environmental Law Association aims to make the law work for a better environment and to improve understanding and awareness of environmental law. UKELA’s members are involved in the practice, study or formulation of Environmental Law in the UK and the European Union. It attracts both lawyers and non-lawyers and has a broad membership from the private and public sectors.
The reasoning for the short-listed topics which was provided with your letter makes it clear that all of the topics have potential to inform important future policy changes. UKELA does not wish to comment negatively in respect of any short-listed topic. Moreover, we have been anxious in making our response to actively look forward rather than scan the list for topics of particular present interest. Even making that allowance, and allowing for the considerable national and international attention which is presently focussed on climate change, we consider that the two topics which address the impact of climate change upon the environment to be clear front-runners in meeting the RCEP’s criteria for selection. In particular, UKELA would anticipate that the RCEP would reach conclusions on principles to be applied in these two topic areas which principles would be both valuable and concerned with matters which have not received substantial attention. Further, there is an obvious requirement for an especially broad range of disciplines to address these issues, which the RCEP was formed to provide.
Two of the short-listed topics are directly focussed on aspects of climate change, which is a strategic focus for UKELA – evidently, we are referring to climate adaption in the UK and geoengineering for climate change. UKELA does not wish to differentiate between the two climate change topics. Indeed, they are, to an extent, opposite sides of the same coin – one is concerned with control of the climate and the other is concerned with dealing with the climatic effects. This reasoning is consistent with UKELA’s own priorities and strategic focus, which was settled after careful and long consideration.
UKELA wishes the Commission well in its future work
Daniel Lawrence
Chairman
UK Environmental Law Association: making the law work for a better environment
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Registered office: One St Paul's Churchyard, London, EC4M 8SH
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