Environmental Policy under New Labour

Abstract

New Labour's efforts to shape development practice to incorporate sustainable precepts and deliver low carbon outcomes are reviewed. A failure to promote integrated environmental policies within government and to subject these to statutory environmental assessment has severely constrained the realisation of sustainable development pathways. Climate change policy initiatives have generated a greater degree of cross-departmental commitment. Yet one of its short-lived initiatives, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, would have struggled to deliver a low carbon economy, because its deliberations were exempt from statutory forms of environmental assessment that quantify the carbon footprints of alternative development scenarios.