As the Negotiations Around Brexit are Ongoing, What Issues of Sustainable Development Should our Leaders be Concerned With? - Maddie

  There has been a focus on sustainable development since the release of the Brundtland Report in 1987. The report defines Sustainable Development as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The most recent global agreement is the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The EU subsequently published its own matching agenda for sustainable development in 2016. The UK is currently bound by both. In 2015 the UK referendum committed the UK to Brexit, the largest economic and political hiatus since the Second World War. To explore the issues our leaders should be concerned with I will evaluate what the UK has agreed to in relation to sustainable development, how much focus sustainable development has had in Brexit, the implication of the type of Brexit on sustainable development goals and the UK’s commitment to sustainable development in two key policy areas, fishing and agriculture.

  There have been several landmark international agreements on sustainable development which the UK is party to. These have identified a common set of issues. For example, 195 parties signed the Paris agreement in 2015 under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)with 175 now participants of it. The aims in 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are clear, with many members having their own policies, includingthe EU and UK. The 2030 Agenda includes17 sustainable development goals (with over 169 associated targets) on a national, global and regional level. This tackles issues ranging from “Ending poverty in all its form everywhere” (Goal 1) to “Taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” (Goal 13).  This agreement follows on from Millennium Development Goals, which expired in 2015 and had great success in certain areas (for example, halving global poverty). In the EU’s own agenda for sustainable development (‘EU 2020’) it makes clear that all of the EU priorities will cover all SDGs in the 2030 Agenda. For example, EU priority three “A resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy”covers the UN SDGs 7 and 13 showing how the EU is fully implementing the UN agenda. The UK also had its own policy for 2016-17 which stated that “Goals would form the basis of new consensus” but the committee stated in March 2017 that “The Government, worryingly, seems to regard the Goals as simply the Millennium Development Goals Mark II, and shows a marked reluctance to take this forward as a domestic agenda.”. It is therefore clear from a review of the key UN, EU and UK policies that they are aligned to ensure that all of these issues are tackled. Going forward our leaders should be focused on implementing the Agenda that has been agreed upon by the UN and EU after Brexit. 

   However currently in the Brexit negotiations, sustainable development has not been a focus.  The lack of attention is shown by analysis of announcements by the newly formed Department of Exiting the European Union. Of 193 announcements made since its formation not a single one was on implementing sustainable development. The focus was much more on technical issues of leaving the EU such as the negotiations and the rights of EU citizens. This demonstrates that other issues are placed before sustainable development during Brexit. Also, the lack of focus is also reflected in the public opinion polls produced by YouGov about ‘What the most important issue facing the country at this time?’. The polls showed that in March 2018 only 12% saw the environment (the closest proxy for sustainable development) as the most important issue compared to Brexit (60%) and the economy (29%). In 2016 the environment polled 11% and in 2017 only 9%. This demonstrates that sustainable development has not been seen by the UK as an issue and raises the question of whether it will be seen as a problem in the future. In conclusion, our leaders do not appear to be prioritising sustainable development during Brexit and are doing nothing to change public awareness about this critical issue. This needs to change in the future.

   The implementation of sustainable development will be determined by whether it will be a ‘hard’ Brexit or a ‘soft’ Brexit.  The EU has made a substantial commitment to implementing 2030 Agenda and SDGs in all policy areas. The implication is that EU laws and regulations will reflect the 2030 Agenda and SDGs. In contrast, the UK has been criticised for having“No strategy or vision to achieve the Goals in the UK”.  Furthermore, the Parliamentary Select Committee said, “The Government has shown little interest in, or enthusiasm for, implementing the Goals in the UK” in March 2017. In the scenario of a ‘soft’ Brexit, although the UK would not automatically be subject to EU environmental rules, most of them would still apply. The same rules would apply to legal enforcement as we would be under the EFTA/EEA enforcement processes. Therefore, it would be likely that 2030 Agenda SDGs set in the EU would apply in the UK. In comparison, if the Government pursues a ‘hard’ Brexit then it will cause problems because we will have to translate 1,100 environmental EU laws and regulations into UK ones as well having to regulate them ourselves. Furthermore, as we would no longer be subject to EU regulation and enforcement and therefore targets, it could lead to a change in standards. Given the UK’s lack of focus on implementing the goals so far there is a risk that it is not made a priority. This would all depend on the terms of trade negotiated and whether our standards would fall or rise. One interesting aspect is that in general the EU requires a sustainability “chapter” in free trade agreements (for example, CETA with Canada) which seeks to prevent a “race to the bottom” on SDGs; this may ultimately mean the UK is held to account on its SDG commitments by the EU even after leaving the EU. However, in general in the public political debate it seems like the choice between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit is being decided by the trade-off between free trade and migration. Our leaders should weigh equally sustainable development and implementing 2030 Agenda in choosing between the form of Brexit because the EU appears to have prioritised sustainable development.

    If the Government continues pursuing a ‘hard’ Brexit, they will have the ability to change and improve the current EU law. At present, issues of sustainable development have not been made a priority in the negotiations but two areas which the Government have the ability to change are fishing and agriculture. I have looked at these two areas to assess whether when given the opportunity the policies are made more sustainable. 

     Currently, the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) includes the UK and has been in force since the 1970s. It is a complex regulatory system for both aquaculture and fishing. The areas of challenge have been the trade-off between employment in fishing, demand for fish and fish stocks. In terms of sustainability there were concerns of over-fishing: in2008 80% of the stocks had been overfished with 30% outside safe biologically limits due to exploitation. The EU has reformed the CFP (for 2014 onwards) to have a much bigger focus on sustainability including getting rid of controversial practices like “discards”. The UK has proposed a reform of fishing after Brexit, “taking back control” of UK waters, altering “too restrictive” quotas, halting over-fishing and “rejuvenating” the industry. The UK has had to agree to current EU rules until 2021 but the policy proposed could be more sustainable through changing to ‘Days at sea’ quotas to reduce mass discards and technology improvements. However, the discussion of a “rejuvenated” fishing industry suggests more domestic fishing and larger catches so it is difficult to assess compared to the current EU policy whether, the approach is moving away or towards sustainability. Therefore, in my view, the issue our leaders should be concerned with is maintaining sustainable fishing and fish stocks long term by reducing quotas not focusing on “rejuvenating” the industry, but it is not clear if the new policy will do this. 

     Similar to the fisheries, the UK is under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for agriculture.  Its main purpose is to “Ensure a decent standard of living for farmers, at the same time as setting requirements for animal health and welfare, environmental protection and food safety” through a system of income support, market measures and rural development.  However, the initial focus of the CAP on productivity meant adverse effects on soil and air quality for example. The EU provides direct payment (subsidies) as a safety net but they are based on size of land and has not been effective. The EU has 6 main priorities with the member states drawing up their own programs but must address at least 4 of them with 30% of the funding to be dedicated to environment and climate change.  Presently the UK relies heavily on the subsidies, providing between 50-80% of farmer’s income which is an issue because it could be reducing incentives for innovation and efficiency gains.  Under the proposed 25 Year Environment Plan (‘A green Future’), from 2022 the UK will scrap subsidies, replace them with public money for public goods, help farmers adapt, provide a coherent policy on food and build a “natural capital thinking” towards land management.  As well as changing financial support given, the Government hopes to simplify current farm inspection regimes but this is suggesting a relaxation, leading to a possible degradation in environmental standards. In comparison to the proposed fisheries policy, the Agricultural policy has potential in being more sustainable because the public money will be based on environmental enhancement alongside production. However, accurately measuring the change in public goods standard will be hard and farmers could seek to ’de-green’ the strict policies of the EU. Overall, it is encouraging to see our leaders proposing to focus on sustainable agriculture following Brexit.   

    A less obvious issue of sustainable development that our leaders should be concerned with is measurement of progress and regulation of new polices they plan to introduce. The 2030 Agenda asks on a national level for member states to put in place systems for measuring progress an - “build on existing initiatives to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement GDP, and support statistical capacity-building in developing countries”. In response to this the EU has stated in its own commission that it will contribute by monitoring on a national level and will regularly report on the implementation of the goals to the United Nations High Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development.For the UK after leaving the EU, it will have to measure progress under the new policies but currently there is confusion as to who is responsible for this. In the 2016-17 House of Commons Committee report on SDGs in the UK states that “We are concerned that the Government appears to have changed its mind about the ONS developing a set of national indicators” and that “Progress on developing measurement frameworks for the Goals is too slow”. Moreover, the lack of coherence between the different frameworks with different metrics across the UK (66), EU (132) and Global (230) indicators of sustainable development is another issue. Only three indicators use the same statistical measures across all three which are GDP per capita, Greenhouse Gas emissions and renewable energy share which could cause problems in terms of comparison. 

  In conclusion, the issues of sustainable development our leaders should be concerned with in Brexit is that currently the Government has done little to implement the SDG’s from the 2030 Agenda and that sustainable development is not being placed as an equal to the economic agreements in the Brexit negotiations and development of policy outside the EU when it is just as important. 



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