We hope you had a good start into 2018, which promises to be a constructive New Year for business, with initiatives to drive positive change, embrace innovation, while the world of politics is shining through glaring absence of vision in this field.
Saying that, the Department of Environment of the UK Government launched it’s new 25-year plan for the environment, which includes many laudable new initiatives, sadly however lacking tangible goals, as well as the necessary associated legislation to enforce the implementation of this plan.
Nevertheless, a written plan is better than just words of hot air, and we very much welcome anything, which puts the protection of the environment as a priority in any governments strategy.
With farming subsidies from the EU no longer available following Brexit, there might indeed be an opportunity for the UK to create an entirely new vision for its natural habitats and take radical steps into the direction of re-establishing sustainable farming systems, which will guarantee enough food and quality food to supply most the countries’ needs
At a recent speech Gove gave at the Oxford Farming Conference he stated that
“Sustainably managed land is far more productive than land that is stressed and stripped of its nutrients. But moving to more sustainable and, ultimately, productive farming methods can involve transitional costs and pressures. So we plan to provide new support for those who choose to farm in the most sustainable fashion.”
The organic movement has done amazing work, which has influenced farming overall […] I think many more farmers would like to go down that road than are currently doing so – part of the responsibility I have is making sure that public money can help them through the transition period before they become fully organic.”
These are indeed new approaches which will help the UK’s transition into a new form of farming, which will ultimately also help to reduce Carbon Emissions from the agricultural industry, and consequently a key ingredient to achieving the Paris reduction goals.
Other European countries, such as Germany for instance, the governments ‘Climate Protection Plan 2050’ interestingly covers not only its energy and manufacturing industries for reduction goals but singles out ‘buildings’ as the 3rd biggest contributors to the countries’ overall carbon emissions. The climate goals here being to reach a reduction of 67% by 2030! This of course is a more tangible figure to work towards and it is something the entire hotel industry will be affected by, as hotels fall under ‘buildings’ when it comes to carbon reporting! Therefore, it will be key for hotels to start tracking their consumption as soon as possible in order to fall into the legal compliance of this protection plan.
Read the Winter News Bulletin 2018 here.
