Climate and Ecology Bill [HL]: HL Bill 13 of 2022-23

The Climate and Ecology Bill [HL] would impose a duty on the government to achieve defined climate and nature targets. This would include introducing a strategy for reducing the UK’s overall contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. This would be consistent with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, meeting commitments given at recent climate summits. The bill would also impose a similar requirement on targets designed to halt and reverse the UK’s overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature.

The bill would provide for the establishment of a climate and nature assembly, comprising a representative sample of the UK population, to advise the government in creating a strategy that helped meet those goals. It also would give duties to the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) including to give advice to the assembly and to evaluate, monitor and report annually on the implementation of the government’s strategy. 

The bill is similar to a private member’s bill proposed by Caroline Lucas (Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion) in the 2019–21 parliamentary session. Ms Lucas’s bill was backed by environmental campaign groups though it did not progress to a second reading. Those same groups, under the umbrella ‘Zero Hour’, are backing Lord Redesdale’s bill.