Environment Act 2021

The Environment Act 2021 received Royal Assent on 9 November 2021. As it stands none of the relevant sections of the Act are currently in force but they are likely to be brought into effect later in 2022/2023 as the necessary secondary regulations are put in place.

Overview

The Act will set statutory targets in four key areas, these targets must be of at least 15 years in duration and be proposed by late 2022:

• air quality
• biodiversity
• water
• waste and resource managment

The Act also creates a new Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) with a wide-ranging brief, including supervising the discharge of environmental duties by the government and other public authorities. This includes powers to investigate alleged breaches of environmental law by public bodies, to issue its own non-binding rulings on alleged breaches and (in effect) to apply to enforce that ruling through the Courts by way of an 'Environmental Review'.

The Act implements the Govenrment's ambitions for improving the natural environment which were previously set out in the 25- Year Environment Plan. The Environment Bill required the government to publish an Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) and the government has pledged to set interim targets for each five-year period and lay out steps it intends to take to improve the natural environment. The 25- Year Environment Plan will be adopted as the first EIP. The OEP is intended to hold the government to account for meeting these targets.

Legal Framework

The first part of the Act puts duties on the Government in relation to environmental governance. This includes requiring the Government to:

• put in place measures to allow the Government to set and meet long-term targets related to the natural environment and people’s enjoyment of the environment;
• set at least one long-term target each related to priority areas of air, water, biodiversity, resource efficiency and waste by October 2022;
• set and meet an air quality target for fine particulate matter;
• set and meet a target related to the abundance of species;
• put in place the processes for setting and amending long-term targets
• have an Environmental Improvement Plan containing steps it intends to take to improve the natural environment. The plan must be for at least 15 years. The 25- Year Environment Plan‘A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment‘ published by the Government in 2018 can be treated as such a plan; and
• collect and publish data related to measuring progress for improving the natural environment and meeting targets.

Proposed Targets

In March 2022 the Government published a consultation seeking views on new targets under the Environment Act 2021 with the aim of improving the natural environment.

Targets proposed within the consultation are as follows:

Air Quality

• A maximum Annual Mean Concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to 10 micrograms (μg) per cubic metre by 2040.
• A reduction in the Population Exposure of PM2.5 by 35% by 2040 (compared to a base year of 2018)

Biodiversity

• Halt the decline in species by 2030 (Species abundance target); and then
• Increase species abundance by at least 10% by 2042 compared to 2030 levels.
• Improve the England-level GB Red List Index of Species extinction risk by 2042, compared to 2022 levels (Exctinction risk of native species - Red List Index target)
• Create or restore in excess of 500,000 hectares of a range of wildlife-rich habitat outside protected sites by 2042, compared to 2022 levels (Wider Habitats target)
• 70% of the designated features in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) network to be in favourable condition by 2042, with the remainder in recovering condition, and additional reporting on changes in individual feature condition (Marine Protection target).
• Increase tree canopy and woodland cover from 14.5% to 17.5% of total land area in England by 2050 (Woodland Cover target).

Waste

• Reduce residual waste (excluding major mineral wastes) kg per capita by 50% by 2042 from the 2019 level of approximately 560kg per capita.

Water

• Reduce the length of rivers and estuaries polluted by target susbstances (cadmium, nickel, lead, copper, zinc, arsenic) from abandoned metal mines by 50% by 2037 (abandoned metal mines target)
• Reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution load from agriculture to the water environment by at least 40% by 2037 against a 2018 baseline (agriculture target)
• A 70% reduction in phosphorus loadings from wastewater/sewage effluent by 2037 against a 2020 baseline (Wastewater target)
• A reduction in Distribution Input (DI) over population by 20% from the 2019/2020 reporting years by 2037/2038 (Water demand target)