Monks Wood Wilderness: 60 years ago, scientists let a farm field rewild – here’s what happened

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

Richard K Broughton, University of OxfordIn the archive of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology there is a typed note from the 1960s that planted the seed of an idea.

Written by Kenneth Mellanby, director of the Monks Wood Experimental Station, a former research centre in Cambridgeshire, UK, the note describes a four-hectare arable field that lies next to the station and the ancient woodland of the Monks Wood National Nature Reserve. After harvesting a final barley crop, the field was ploughed and then abandoned in 1961.

The note reads:

It might be interesting to watch what happens to this area if man does not interfere. Will it become a wood again, how long will it take, which species will be in it?

So began the Monks Wood Wilderness experiment, which is now 60 years old. A rewilding study before the term existed, it shows how allowing land to naturally regenerate can expand native woodland and help tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.

The Monks Wood Wilderness field (outlined in red) shortly after abandonment in the early 1960s.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

How new woodland generates itself

A shrubland of thorn thickets emerged after the first ten to 15 years. Dominated by bramble and hawthorn, its seeds were dropped by thrushes and other berry-eating birds. This thicket protected seedlings of wind-blown common ash and field maple, but especially English oak, whose acorns were planted by Eurasian jays (and maybe grey squirrels too) as forgotten food caches. It’s thought that jays were particularly busy in the Monks Wood Wilderness, as 52% of the trees are oaks.

Jays habitually collect and cache acorns in autumn. Forgotten caches germinate into oak seedlings.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

The intermediate shrubland stage was a suntrap of blossom and wildflowers. Rabbits, brown hares, muntjac deer and roe deer were all common, but the protective thicket meant there was no need for fencing to prevent them eating the emerging trees. Those trees eventually rose up and closed their canopy above the thicket, which became the woodland understorey.

The result is a structurally complex woodland with multiple layers of tree and shrub vegetation, and accumulating deadwood as the habitat ages. This complexity offers niches for a wide variety of woodland wildlife, from fungi and invertebrates in the dead logs and branches, to song thrushes, garden warblers and nuthatches which nest in the ground layer, understorey and tree canopy.

The Monks Wood Wilderness in 2021, after 60 years of natural regeneration.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

The Monks Wood experiment benefited from the field lying close to an ancient woodland, which meant an ample supply of seeds and agents for their dispersal – jays, rodents, and the wind. Such rapid colonisation of the land would be unlikely in more remote places, or where deer are superabundant.

But there are many woods in the UK that could expand by allowing adjacent fields to return to nature. This would eventually add up to a significant increase in total woodland cover.

The Monks Wood Wilderness (outlined in red) in 2014.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

Tree planting or natural regeneration?

The UK is one of the least forested places in Europe, with just 13% forest cover compared to an average of 38% across the EU. Only half of the UK’s forest is native woodland, which sustains a wide variety of indigenous species. The rest is dominated by non-native conifer plantations grown for timber.

This situation is gradually changing. The UK government aims to create 30,000 hectares of new woodland each year until 2025, providing new habitat for wildlife and helping reach net zero emissions, as woodland stores more carbon than any other habitat except peatlands.

With the climate and biodiversity crises getting worse each day, there’s an urgent need to expand woodland fast. But how? Tree planting is the usual approach, but it’s costly. Saplings also have to be grown, transported, planted and protected with fencing and plastic tubes – that’s a lot of carbon emissions and potential plastic pollution, as tubes break down into the soil.

What about doing virtually nothing instead? Natural regeneration involves creating woodlands by allowing trees and shrubs to plant themselves under natural processes. It’s free and involves no plastic or nursery-grown saplings, which can introduce diseases. The result is woodland that’s well adapted to local conditions.

Oak seedlings were early pioneers in the regeneration of the woodland.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

Allowing the land to naturally regenerate sounds exciting, but planners and ecologists need to know where this approach is likely to work best. How abandoned land turns into woodland is rarely documented, as it usually happens where people have walked away.

The Monks Wood Wilderness fills in this gap in our knowledge as an example of planned natural regeneration that has been monitored over decades, with a second two-hectare field (named the New Wilderness) added in 1996 to expand the experiment.

Shrubland in the New Wilderness field after 25 years, with hawthorns blossoming.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Author provided

Since the 1990s, the two Wildernesses have been regularly surveyed by scientists counting and measuring trees on foot and tracking tree cover from planes and drones. These surveys documented the development of woodland over 60 years in our recently published study, revealing the patterns of habitat regeneration.

We can now finally answer Mellanby’s 60-year old questions. Within 40 to 50 years, the ploughed field became a closed canopy woodland with almost 400 trees per hectare. And as the canopy grows taller, more plant and animal species are arriving, such as marsh tits and purple hairstreak butterflies – mature woodland specialists that have made a home here as the habitat gradually converges with the ancient woodland nearby.

The Wilderness experiment shows what’s possible when nature is allowed to create rich, native woodland for free. I think Mellanby would be pleased with how it all turned out.

Richard K Broughton, Ecologist and Ornithologist at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Senior Research Associate in Zoology, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Advertisement

One of Earth’s most biodiverse habitats lies off the Scottish west coast – but climate change could wipe it out

Lukassek/Shutterstock

Heidi Burdett, Heriot-Watt University and Cornelia Simon-Nutbrown, Heriot-Watt University

Maerl beds stud the ocean floor like underwater brambles. They’re pastel pink and, despite their knobbly appearance, made up of a red seaweed. This algae has a limestone skeleton which gives it a complex three-dimensional structure that is quite unlike the slimy seaweeds you may be more familiar with.

In fact, the closest thing to a maerl bed you’ve probably heard of is a coral reef. Like tropical reefs, the seaweeds in maerl beds interlock as they grow, creating nooks and crannies that serve as the perfect home for a huge range of sealife. Maerl beds are one of the world’s most biodiverse habitats, but unlike coral reefs, few people have heard of them and even fewer study them.

Also known as “rhodolith beds”, maerl beds are found in coastal waters all over the world, from the poles to the equator, but pockets of this habitat form European strongholds off Scotland’s west coast and islands. Sadly, our new research has revealed how climate change threatens to destroy much of this natural heritage before its wonders have been brought to light.

A piece of Scottish maerl that is well over 100 years old.
Nick Kamenos, Author provided

Climate change and maerl beds

Maerl grows at a glacial pace – just 0.2 mm per year in Scotland. This makes it difficult for these habitats to respond to rapid changes in water temperature or ocean currents. But these are just the kind of environmental changes that are expected around Scotland over the coming century.

Until recently, scientists had only conducted small-scale experiments on maerl, so we knew very little about how Scotland’s beds would respond to climate change. To overcome this, we developed a computer model that can predict how the multiple changes to Scotland’s climate will affect the distribution of this habitat by 2100.

Astonishingly, even in the best-case scenario, where emissions are rapidly reduced from current levels, we predict that maerl bed distribution will shrink by 38% by the end of the century. If global emissions stick to their current trajectory, we predict a massive 84% decline in maerl bed distribution around Scotland. Without major changes we will likely follow this path, or worse.

Our research tells us that this would be devastating for the flora and fauna that call this habitat home, including commercially important species such as juvenile pollack, hake and scallops.

Scotland’s maerl beds under ‘worst-case’ warming scenario

Simon-Nutbrown et al. (2020), Author provided

Refuge areas

Only international efforts to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could improve the situation for Scotland’s maerl beds. But managing the coastal ocean better – with regulation of trawling and pollution – could soften the blow. Since our model found that the rate of habitat decline will be fastest between now and 2050, the need for rapid action is even more urgent.

It’s unrealistic to expect the entire coastal ocean of a country to be placed under strict marine protection. After all, these regions are very valuable to a range of industries and interests, like tourism, shipping and fishing. Where then, should we focus our efforts? Our computer model helps with this too.

We have identified some key areas in which maerl populations are likely to persist in local micro-climates. Here, temperatures are not predicted to rise as much as the surrounding water and changes in waves and currents at the seafloor are expected to be less pronounced. This will allow maerl beds to remain in areas such as Loch Laxford, mainland Orkney and mainland Shetland. Protecting and monitoring these refuge areas could maximise the chances of these habitats surviving for future generations to enjoy.

A Scottish maerl bed brimming with life.
Nick Kamenos, Author provided

Knowing where a habitat might continue to thrive in the future is crucial for planning how to manage coastal seas better, and being able to map these areas can help reconcile their protection with other activities. The refuge areas we found will now be considered as priority conservation areas by the Scottish Government.

Climate change is expected to affect maerl beds all around the world, so the computer model we’ve created can now find other areas where they may be able to cling on globally. Conservation can be long, gruelling work, so being able to focus marine protection efforts in areas with the highest chance of survival could help safeguard at least some of this habitat for future generations.

Heidi Burdett, Research Fellow, Lyell Centre for Earth and Marine Science and Technology, Heriot-Watt University and Cornelia Simon-Nutbrown, PhD Candidate in Marine Conservation, Heriot-Watt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why going camping could be the answer to your lockdown holiday woes

Pexels

Carol Southall, Staffordshire University

For many of us, the forced confinement of lockdown has reiterated the importance of being out and about in nature – along with the benefits it can bring.

So as the UK begins to reopen, it’s likely that many people will be craving space away from crowds and busy, built-up areas. And given that, one in eight British households has no garden, there is likely to be a surge in people heading off to enjoy the great outdoors and British countryside.

Indeed, outdoor areas and activities – think gardens, national parks and coastal areas – are likely to be busier than usual. Predominantly indoor activities and venues, meanwhile – such as restaurants, museums and galleries – are likely to face lengthier periods of subdued demand.

As a result, the tourism industry is anticipating a surge in people taking active outdoor breaks close to home. In the US for example, a national marketing campaign from the National Park Foundation will promote lesser-known parks as destinations. While Airbnb’s recent Go Near initiative aims to support the “growing desire for domestic travel”.

In the UK, VisitBritain’s weekly UK COVID-19 Consumer Tracker Report shows that 20% of adults in the UK plan to take a short break or holiday within the UK by September. Coastal areas (both urban and rural) are emerging as top destinations.

Heading outdoors

Spending time outdoors, can improve your blood pressure and digestion and boost the immune system. Spending time in green space, near trees, also means that we take in more oxygen, which in turn leads to release of the feelgood hormone serotonin.

Spending time outdoors can give you that natural boost.
DisobeyArt/Shutterstock

Many families incorporate outdoor activity in green space into their holiday plans as a way of improving wellbeing and mental health. Active pursuits in the outdoors can also bring families together to enjoy themselves.

Camping, more than most forms of holiday, involves family members doing more together and encourages a more active, back-to-nature lifestyle. And, according to research from the University of Plymouth, children who go camping do better at school and are healthier and happier. So it’s a win-win.

The children who took part in the research were asked what they love about camping and the most common themes were making and meeting new friends, having fun, playing outside and learning various camping skills. Children also recognised camping’s value for problem solving and working together – out in the fresh air, away from the TV and computers.

Quality family time

The make-up of family units has changed massively over the past two decades. And many families now live spread out – no longer in one place, town or city. So for many families, holidays offer the offer the chance to spend time and reconnect with different generations of their family – along with quality time together that is so fundamental to family life.

Time outdoors can give families the chance to reconnect.
Shutterstock/Maksym Gorpenyuk

For families with busy lives, where parents are often working long hours, the chance to be together on holiday can feel key to the survival of the family unit. And many working parents – mums in particular – have found that the struggle to balance work and childcare has been exacerbated during lockdown.

But of course, families struggling to spend time together is not a new phenomenon. In 2011 a Thomson Holiday report found that, more than one-quarter of working parents spent less than an hour a day with their children. This is despite wanting more time together.

Time for a break

The benefits of family holidays are numerous. They can give all members of the family time to regain balance, reconnect and restore equilibrium. Holidays are also often an opportunity for people to try new skills, sports or activities – which can help to boost confidence and self-esteem.

So don’t despair if you’re no longer heading abroad this summer. Instead, head for the great outdoors and enjoy some quality family time – away from the house and daily lockdown routine.

This will not only give you a chance to relax and unwind in a new environment but will also encourage children and other family members to try something new – whether it’s toasting marshmallows and singing campfire songs, swimming in rivers, stargazing – or simply just being close to nature.

Carol Southall, Course Leader and Senior Lecturer at Staffordshire Business School, Staffordshire University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

London

Rewild 25% of the UK for less climate change, more wildlife and a life lived closer to nature

Eduard Militaru/Unsplash, CC BY-SA

Simon Lewis, UCL

The UK’s Labour Party has pledged to offer voters a Green New Deal at the next election. This is a radical programme for decarbonising society and the economy by 2030, through phasing out fossil fuels, investing in renewable energy and creating a public works programme to build the zero-carbon infrastructure of the future.

In my recent report, A Green New Deal for Nature, I argued that giving land back to nature could be another part of this vision. Restoring forests and other natural habitats to 25% of the UK’s land surface could sequester 14% of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions each year. As emissions are scaled down and these ecosystems expand, they could continue to remove much greater quantities of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in future.

Often called “natural climate solutions”, restoring forests and wetlands draws carbon down from the atmosphere and stores it in the tissue of new vegetation and soil. On a large scale, and alongside leaving fossil fuels in the ground, this could help to limit global heating to well below 2°C.

The Domesday Book of 1086 indicated forest cover of 15%, ‘but significant loss of woodland started over 4,000 years ago in prehistory’. By the beginning of the 20th century, this had dropped to 5%.
Defra

These habitats can be restored through rewilding, which means giving natural processes a helping hand by stopping the draining of peatland for example, or letting a woodland regrow. Reintroducing species that were once extinct in a region can also help ecosystems regenerate. While letting nature take care of itself isn’t appropriate in all cases, rewilding is one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to resist climate breakdown and wildlife loss at the same time.

But what might that look like in practice?

---

Read more:
You can rewild your garden into a miniature rainforest – Imagine newsletter #4

---

The “green” in the Green New Deal

For wildlife, it’s important that restored habitats are connected. Linked habitats allow plants and animals to move more easily as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change. If species can migrate through green corridors to cooler areas, they could avoid local extinctions. This could mean a network of expanded hedgerows and woodland that criss-crosses the land, connecting wild habitats and ensuring species can migrate safely between them.

Other changes include reintroducing European beavers to flood plains to help manage flood risks. In remote places like the Scottish Highlands, wolves could return to keep herbivores in check and help woodlands rebound, increasing their long-term potential to store carbon. Rewilding instead of burning or draining carbon-rich peatlands would allow their vegetation and carbon stocks to recover. Wildlife, from insects to birds and large mammals, would have space to flourish. The UK would switch from being one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries to a green and vibrant land.

Beavers have returned to the UK’s rivers after an absence of 500 years.
Abi Warner/Shutterstock

This may sound utopian, but it’s not. The UK is a densely populated country, and with 72% of the land area used for agriculture, it might seem that there’s little room for anything else. But less than 20% of the UK is occupied by crops or dense urban communities, so 80% of it could be better managed for nature and storing carbon.

Some 45% of the UK’s land surface is given to grazing livestock. The poorest land for agricultural productivity is only farmed because of taxpayer subsidies. Meanwhile, about 13% of the UK is allocated to grouse-shooting and deer-stalking, often on degraded peatlands that are managed at huge environmental cost for the benefit of a tiny number of hunters. This land is currently of little value for food production, but it could store plenty of carbon if rewilded.

---

Read more:
Rewilding is essential to the UK’s commitment to zero carbon emissions

---

The exact locations should be the subject of local knowledge and consultation, but reducing grazing land from 45% of the UK to 33% and returning that 12% to wild habitat could provide half of the carbon storage needed. Restoring half of the UK’s peatlands could add 6% more land, alongside protecting the 7% of the UK that is already broadleaf woodlands and wildflower meadows. Together, this would make 25% of the UK’s land a refuge for wildlife and a vast reservoir of CO₂.

The Lady Fen wetland in Norfolk was recently restored to 300 acres.
Tony Mills/Shutterstock

How can it be done?

Farm subsidies currently give £3 billion to UK farmers ever year. By some estimates, subsidies are half the income of many farmers. After Brexit, this money could be given to farmers to reward them for storing carbon and rewilding, making this more financially viable than grazing on agriculturally poor land.

Economy-wide carbon taxes could also pay for rewilding schemes, while the government could also issue green bonds to raise funds to lend to landowners, helping cover the early costs of restoring land to wild habitat.

Reducing the demand for farm produce from land will also be key to making space for nature. This means cutting down on the most inefficient use of land – farming for meat and dairy, which uses between four and 100 times the land area to produce a single gram of protein compared to beans, nuts and other plant sources. Policies which make it easier for everyone to eat food that’s healthy and sustainable – including less meat and dairy – are the final pieces of the puzzle.

Less climate change, more wildlife, and a longer life lived closer to nature. That’s a lot to gain from modest investments in how land is used in the UK.

---

Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.

Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at University of Leeds and, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Heatwaves and flash floods: yes, this is Britain’s ‘new normal’

Hayley J. Fowler, Newcastle University

“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that we had a heatwave just last week?”

Those words were spoken by a BBC news presenter, in front of graphic images of fire service rescues, as heavy rain caused floods and landslides which closed many roads and railway lines. In recent days there have dramatic floods across the north of England, particularly around Manchester, the Peak District and Yorkshire.

For me, this is personal, as I am from the worst affected area. I went to high school where people spent the night in their Civic Hall. Three miles away from where I grew up, a dam holding back Toddbrook Reservoir has been at risk of collapse and the town of Whaley Bridge was evacuated. But I’m not surprised that we are seeing flash flooding and I expect it to get worse in the future.

I am a professor at Newcastle University, where I lead a large research group focused on understanding changes to intense rainfall events and flash floods. Over the past eight years we’ve been working closely with colleagues at the UK Met Office to develop new very high-resolution climate models that can simulate these very intense summer storms and therefore predict what might happen in a warming climate.

Our models tell us that by 2080 summers in the UK will be much hotter and drier. Heatwaves will be more common. In fact a report released by the Met Office on the same day as the latest flash floods tells us that heatwaves are already happening more often. When Cambridge recently hit 38.7℃, the UK became one of 12 countries to break its national temperature record this year.

The world is warming. But although UK average summer rainfall is predicted to decrease, our models tell us that when it does rain it will be more intense than has been the case. Flash flooding in the UK is generally caused by intense rainstorms, where more than 30mm falls in an hour. Climate models predict these will happen five times more often by 2080.

Part of the reason for this is the simple fact that warmer air can hold more moisture. But that’s too simple: the availability of moisture also increases in areas close to warm oceans – warmer sea surface temperatures cause more moisture to be evaporated into the atmosphere, providing additional fuel for these intense storms. And here’s the scary bit: the Atlantic Ocean provides a vast source of moisture for storms in the UK.

But that’s not the whole story. Heavy, short rain storms are intensifying more rapidly than would be expected with global warming (what we call the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship). Research also suggests that more intense storms can themselves grow bigger, and with both the intensity of the rainfall and the spatial footprint of the storm increasing, the total rainfall in an “event” could double.

What’s more, the larger storms seem to have an ability to draw in more moisture from the surrounding area and become even more intense: the additional energy (heating) fuelling the uplift of air within the storm’s core draws in even more moisture from the surface, allowing them to grow even larger, with more potential for flooding. These also provide the perfect ingredients for large hail storms.

So, it is entirely consistent that we might expect both more heatwaves and more intense summer thunderstorms in a warmer climate. We also know which areas of the country are already susceptible to these flash floods from our analysis of historical records of flooding. Newspapers have reported on the dramatic impacts of these floods for centuries and this has allowed my team to reconstruct a flash-flooding history of the UK.

Certain parts of the country are highly vulnerable as their rivers respond quickly to rainstorms. These rivers tend to be found in steep, upland catchments underlain by non-permeable rocks, mainly in the north and west of the UK. High-risk catchments also include urban areas where the ground is also non-permeable, for entirely different reasons.

Many of the towns reported to have suffered “biblical” flooding recently have suffered repeated flooding through history, but perhaps not within living memory. For example, Whaley Bridge is mentioned twice in the flood chronologies for events in June 1872 and July 1881:

On 19th [June 1872] the Goyt was 12 to 14 feet above its normal level. At Whaley Bridge houses near the river were completely flooded and people were taken into the chapel and inns … in Macclesfield a woman and child were drowned when the river Bollin overflowed. Two reservoirs burst in the vicinity.

This rich archive of knowledge, including the prevalence of flooding in certain towns, even specific roads, is something we should draw upon in planning both the emergency response to these flash floods and for reducing their future impact. We can learn a lot from the past in how to manage the greater risks of flooding the future will bring.

Hayley J. Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts, Newcastle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wild Great Britain

The UK has a national climate change act – why don’t we?

It’s time Australian politicians were guided by national climate change legislation.
Shutterstock

Anna Skarbek, Monash University; Anna Malos, ClimateWorks Australia; Cameron Hepburn, University of Oxford, and Matthew Carl Ives, University of Oxford

No matter who wins the upcoming federal election, both the ALP and LNP are committed to remaining in the Paris Climate Agreement.

This means every five years Australia is expected to submit progressively stronger targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and report on progress. And by 2020, Australia is expected to submit a long-term emissions reduction strategy showing how to get to net zero emissions.

---

Read more:
UK becomes first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’

---

Regardless of what policy mix is chosen to achieve this, the process of hitting the Paris targets is now a permanent feature of economy-wide decision-making, one that will need credible ongoing support from government and businesses. Policy uncertainty, and a lack of national framework, has reduced investment confidence.

The UK has shown how national climate change legislation can guide institutional action, and not only dramatically cut emissions, but also promote economic growth.

Victoria rolled out similar legislation in 2017, one of the first pieces of legislation in the world to be modelled on the Paris Agreement.

But Australia lacks a national version of Victoria’s or UK’s legislation.

We have national targets, but not yet ongoing systems embedded in departments. These systems would include measures to ensure continuous target-setting every five years (as used in other jurisdictions) with guidelines and progress reporting obligations. A lack of national legislation means the community and businesses lack transparency about Australia’s long-term direction, pace and progress.

How national climate change legislation would work

A national Climate Change Act would reduce recognise climate change was not taken into account when many current laws were developed, and reduce policy instability around Australian meeting our Paris obligations by:

• providing a role for governments and courts to flesh out and stabilise the low carbon transition

• guiding an emissions reductions path that looks ten years ahead, across all sectors of the economy, and that can be ratcheted up if policies fail to meet their targets

• ensuring transparent reporting of emissions and progress towards meeting interim Paris Agreement targets

• allocating responsibilities across government for reporting and climate-conscious planning

• signalling to business, communities and government agencies about emerging opportunities in a low carbon economy.

How Victoria did it

In 2017, the Victorian Labor government rolled out state-wide climate legislation, the Victorian Climate Change Act.

This legislation recognises how addressing climate change needs a whole-of-government approach, extending obligations to each state government portfolio.

And it has already catalysed climate change reporting and planning activity across government. An independent committee
has been tasked with advising on the first ten years of emissions budgets.

Government departments are preparing adaptation plans for each sector, reviewing operational guidelines and establishing regular reporting of emissions in sectors and their future plans.

---

Read more:
Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side

---

The UK’s success story

The UK passed its Climate Change Act in 2008 with a near unanimous vote. It has guided government decisions on national energy and industrial policy ever since.

The Act contains a process for setting economy-wide, multi-year targets, generating a clear, but flexible path towards its long-term objective – an 80% reduction in national greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s not explicit about how targets are to be met and successive governments have been free to choose their own mitigation policies.

What has resulted is a clear shift away from the politics of the past where climate change action was traded off against other government goals.

Ever since the Act passed, subsequent UK parliaments have created management and efficiency initiatives, a minimum price on carbon (called carbon price floors), renewable energy targets, competitive reverse auction schemes and capacity markets.

The UK’s national climate change act has dramatically reduced their carbon emissions to below 1860s levels.
Shutterstock

Combined, these policies promote a competitive, sustainable, low carbon energy supply, along with economic growth and increased national energy security.

And the results have been extraordinary: emissions in the UK have fallen dramatically since 2008, with the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions now below 1860s levels.

National transparency would improve the market

With a clear legislative process with interim targets every five years, a Climate Change Act for Australia would provide businesses and the public with a certainty around the pace of climate change action that reaches beyond the political cycles.

Governments would still have the freedom to choose interim targets and how to deliver them, but the legislation would create transparency around our obligations.

It would also ensure that a transition to a low-carbon future does not risk financial stability.

Regulatory bodies, such as the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Bank of England, and the Financial Stability Board, recognise the necessity for climate change legislation to create confidence in markets. They are already applying pressure to local and international financial markets to improve disclosure of climate risk.

Finally, national legislation would ensure the market and the public are kept up-to-date about progress and future pathways, and how they can be involved in the process along the way. This includes investing in Australia’s potential as a new lower-carbon powerhouse.

---

Read more:
Cutting cities’ emissions does have economic benefits – and these ultimately outweigh the costs

---

Let’s agree what is agreed, and move on

Australian politicians don’t often agree on climate change action, but the major parties do agree on Australia staying in the Paris Agreement.

A national Climate Change Act for Australia would embody this commitment, aligning us with the international process in a policy-flexible framework. Agreement on such an Act would show the Australian public that each party is serious about tackling climate change, providing a stable platform for the next parliament.

Anna Skarbek, CEO at ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University; Anna Malos, Project Manager, climate and energy policy, ClimateWorks Australia; Cameron Hepburn, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Oxford, and Matthew Carl Ives, Senior Researcher in Economics, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UK becomes first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’

Days of protest by Extinction Rebellion have brought parts of London to a standstill.
Shutterstock

Chris Turney, UNSW

On Wednesday night a bipartisan UK Parliament passed an extraordinary measure: a national declaration of an Environment and Climate Emergency.

The UK is the first national government to declare such an emergency. The decision marks a renewed sense of urgency in tackling climate change, following a visit to Parliament by teenage activist Greta Thunberg , the broadcast of David Attenborough’s documentary Climate Change: The Facts and 11 days of protest by environmental group Extinction Rebellion that paralysed parts of London.

---

Read more:
Extinction Rebellion: disruption and arrests can bring social change

---

There are now some 49 million people living under national, city and local declarations of a climate emergency around the world.

Extinction Rebellion protesters surround a boat blocking Oxford Circus, London.
Kevin J. Frost/Shutterstock

What is a climate emergency?

While there is no precise definition of what constitutes action to meet such an emergency, the move has been likened to putting the country on a “war footing”, with climate and the environment at the very centre of all government policy, rather than being on the fringe of political decisions.

The UK are legally committed to a 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 (relative to their 1990 levels) and was recently recognised as one of just 18 developed economies that have driven down carbon dioxide emissions over the last decade.

Some city and local councils have set out their climate emergency policies to become carbon zero by 2030 built around renewable energy supplies, more energy-efficient housing and a host of other measures. Yesterday’s decision in Parliament implies further national reductions and investment in this space.

---

Read more:
The terror of climate change is transforming young people’s identity

---

Counting down to 2030

The year 2030 is an important target. In spite of what climate contrarians might voice very loudly, five of our planet’s warmest years on record have occurred since 2010, whilst 2018 experienced all manner of climate extremes that broke numerous global records.

It’s sobering to realise that, because the oceans are a major sink of heat, the estimated 40-year delay in the release of this energy back into the atmosphere means the conditions of the last decade are in part a consequence of our pollution from the 1970s.

With the planet to experience further warming from the heat held by the oceans, there is increasing international focus on meeting the United Nation’s Paris Agreement which was signed by 197 countries in 2016. This ground-breaking agreement has the ambitious global aim of preventing global temperatures from reaching 2˚C above pre-industrial levels (the late nineteenth century) by 2100, and ideally should be no more than 1.5˚C.

Declaring an emergency was one of the demands from the Extinction Rebellion protest put to the UK government.
Shutterstock

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) has suggested that meeting this target means annual global carbon emissions must effectively halve between now and 2030, and then fall to zero by 2050. This is a target the UK opposition party Labour are now calling for.

More recent studies suggest even more ambitious cuts may be required.

The cost of inaction

Research in Australia has investigated the cost to the global economy if the Paris Agreement is not met and the world hits 4˚C warmer.

The values are eye-watering: an estimated US$23 trillion a year over the long-term. This has been likened to the world experiencing four to six global financial crises on the scale of 2008 every year.

In Australia, the cost would be on the order of A$159 billion a year, with most of the losses caused by drought-driven collapses in agricultural productivity and sea level rise. The expense to each Australian household has been put at the order of A$14,000.

The declaration of climate emergency by the UK comes at a crucial time in Australia, just two weeks out from a federal election. While the major parties have made public statements of support for the Paris Agreement, it remains unclear whether current and former leaders are fully aware of their obligations.

---

Read more:
Climate change forced these Fijian communities to move – and with 80 more at risk, here’s what they learned

---

At a time when politicians discuss the need to “live within our means” when it comes to national finances, this does not appear to translate to the environment when we’re considering future generations.

Instead we seem to be caught in a debate surrounding the costs of action rather than inaction. The next generation of Australian voters certainly don’t seem confident about political commitments to their future as they hold their third national school strike tomorrow.

The welcome announcement from the UK is a major step in the right direction and potentially a watershed moment for a more sustainable global future. Is it too much to hope Australia could follow next?

Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Science and Climate Change, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

London