Current situation
Positive benefit of EU
Friends of the Earth believe that in the field of environmental policy, the EU has had an overwhelmingly positive effect. Through EU membership the UK government has had to put in place a host of policies with strict, legally-binding targets. It also has to provide regular, publicly-available reports on its performance in meeting those targets. Targets include: reduced sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide air pollution, cleaner rivers, cleaner beaches and greater UK wildlife protection.
While far from perfect, EU membership has benefited the UK’s nature and environment. 28 countries joining to tackle shared challenges across the continent has led to healthier air, cleaner beaches and water, and more protection for animals, birds and their habitats.
In the 1970s the UK was known as the ‘dirty man of Europe’. Pollution from UK coal-fired power stations was causing acid rain. Forests across Europe withered. EU action on air quality put an end to this. As a result, sulphur dioxide emissions dropped by 94% by 2011. This prevented an estimated 46,000 premature deaths between 1990 and 2001.
EU protection of UK sites
The EU protects some of the UK’s best loved nature sites. These include places like Cannock Chase, Flamborough Head, Dartmoor and Snowdonia. Before European Nature Directives kicked in, we were losing 15% of our protected sites a year. Now it is down to 1%. In the 1970s we pumped untreated sewage straight into the sea. But EU laws, and the threat of fines, forced us to clean up our act. Now over 90% of our beaches are considered clean enough to bathe off.
Source: Friends of the Earth, Brexit and the environment – protecting what we have
Implications of Brexit
The huge progress made in improving the UK environment could be lost without external pressure and checks from EU actors, particularly in the areas of habitats, birds and bathing water.
A total withdrawal from the EU suggests a much wider erosion of environmental policy. This risks significant environmental damage to the UK. Government ministers have frequently tried to weaken progressive environmental policy at the European level. In the UK, a glaring example is the government’s on-going refusal to implement important air quality law. These behaviours suggest that, in the absence of external pressure, UK environmental policy will weaken.
Friends of the Earth has signed up to the policy objectives of Greener UK and is campaigning for:
- Environmental laws to stay as strong as, or stronger than, those in the rest of Europe;
- UK to be an international leader on climate change;
- Any farming or land subsidies to be based on public good, e.g. improving biodiversity or better flood protection;
- UK to keep working with its European and international neighbours on joint environmental challenges.