COV0023
Written evidence submitted by Dr Ruth E. McKie
Greening the post-Covid Recovery
Authors: Dr Ruth McKie, Mark Charlton, Dr Andrew Mitchell, Geraldine Dening.
Affiliations: De Montfort University
Organisational Information
De Montfort University, Leicester UK, has over 20000 students and a key hub for social and economic development within both Leicester and the wider region. DMU has been at the forefront of leading local programmes and supporting local communities through its DMU Local Team (https://www.dmu.ac.uk/community/public-engagement/index.aspx). This has provided opportunities for De Montfort University to be part of a growing and thriving city. Furthermore, De Montfort University is a SDG 16 hub, working alongside the United Nations in support efforts to meet this goal. Expert staff from across four different sectors of the university have come together to develop this call for evidence.
Executive Summary
This paper provides a detailed summary of existing literature and evidence identifying a series of recommendations for a post - COVID green economy. They cover the following areas: learning from the 2008 recovery, financial service sector, green jobs and training, housing, international obligations, pollution and waste crime, Community engagement and environmental justice. For each we summarise some key points drawing on peer reviewed academic literature from a diverse range of fields and some recommendations. We then offer some concluding remarks on what we consider integral steps in greening the post – COVID recovery.
An overview of our recommendations are as follows:
1) Multi-organizational approach to the COVID recovery where the public, private, and third sector work together to provide a collective response across multiple sectors
2) Training and upskilling through appropriate training in further education and higher education to provide skills for green industries.
3) Sophisticated regulations for businesses to encourage enhanced green corporate responsibility and encouraging the ‘nudge’ effect.
4) Endorse widespread promotion of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for a greener, sustainable recovery, commit to funding and supporting advanced research and technological development commensurate with the decarbonised energy and sustainable developmental agendas, and embed at least three of the seventeen SDGS as appropriate into each ministry and government department.
5) Improving and refitting existing homes so that they become more environmentally friendly. This should begin at a local level developed through local manufacturers and businesses to help stimulate localised economies.
6) Increase regulation within housing sector to ensure old buildings and owners are given support to update problematic structures and on any new builds both social and private housing to ensure energy efficiency and improving housing standards.
7) Prioritise the increase of council owned housing to offer low cost, healthy and regulated housing to those who are living in unhealthy, under-regulated and overpriced private rental housing. The most efficient way to achieve this is to increase the density of existing housing estates as demonstrated in the Costs of Estate Regeneration (ASH 2018)
8) Develop education programmes and campaigns to increase recycling and knowledge of recycling.
9) Ensure the development and infrastructure of a circular economy, including circular waste economy to reduce pollution and waste.
Responding Differently to the 2008 Financial Recovery
Given that the UK Government is legally obliged to meet its 2008 Climate Change Act commitments, significant action on the part of the government needs to permeate all ministries as a matter of urgency. This should happen at a policy level which, unlike the response to the 2008 financial/ banking crisis, must result in a meaningful increase in regulatory oversight. There needs to be hard-baked actions into policy and articulated through increasing robust necessary regulations.
Financial Service Sector & Industry Development
Government has set out a range of options so that it becomes a financial services leader through successive bouts of deregulation and the promotion of weaker tax laws. However, across the peer reviewed literature, we note that often these attempts to deregulate and reduce tax income are in direct opposition to its ambition to be a green centre of excellence with a booming economy (Brand, 2012).
Government must recognise the contradictions between a green future and increased deregulation and weaker tax income under the current economic infrastructure. However, where there is evidence of potential economic development and mitigating environmental decline this could be used as an indicative pathway (e.g. Borel-Saladin and Turok, 2013). This market infrastructure and technological investment comes from examples taken by China (e.g. Mol and Carter, 2006).
The Chinese economy and social structure look different to the UK, however, there are opportunities to use adapted/similar policy models to head towards a green economy. Evidence suggests – according to the Porter Hypothesis – that flexible existing environmental regulations have some positive effect encouraging some innovation and development to reduce environmental harm by heavily polluting corporate industries (e.g. Zhao and Sun, 2016). While we acknowledge research suggests some weak effects, there is certainly evidence nevertheless that these incentives do work, particularly with respect to a nudge effect on these industries (Carlsson et al, 2019) that could be expanded to help facilitate broader structural change. Furthermore, our COVID recovery is coupled with the changing relationships with the EU. Government investment in supporting national industries and manufacturing, will allow market actors to play a role in managing and respond to local and regional environmental changes, as noted in the Chinese case (Zhao and Sun, 2016).
Recommendations:
1) Investment in a solid base of advanced manufacturing and technical development in greener and more energy efficient technologies.
2) Localise this manufacturing base to help stimulate local community growth with upskilling and retraining existing workforces
3) Ensure upskilling and retraining through collaborations with FE and HE institutions.
4) Implement cross-ministerial environmental policy that encourages ‘nudging.’
5) A strong and robust system of regulations making clear to businesses that pollution and the destruction of biodiversity is not the cost of doing business.
‘Green’ Jobs and Training
Government has identified its commitment to the growth of green jobs. However, so-called 'green jobs' are not in themselves a panacea. These require a series of building blocks from multiple sectors to build the skills needed for greening the economy. Of note here is that these must not be in isolation, but rather a co-ordinated effort between sectors, including government, private and education. The UK has long since lost its manufacturing base, so coupling specialised manufacturing to develop insulation solutions, and energy efficient appliances and fixtures, along with a mobilisation of workers at all levels to fit, install, and manufacture would be an optimal solution. This multilevel process will be meaningful both in terms of 1) its potential as an economic stimulus with opportunities for the UK to become a global hub for skills and development, and 2) using existing energy more efficiently thereby supporting government in meeting its legal obligations under the Climate Change Act.
Recommendations:
1) inward investment in universities and training institutions to provide appropriate skills and crafts-based education curricula.
2) Commit to funding and supporting advanced research and technological development commensurate with the decarbonised energy and sustainable developmental agendas,
3) Inward investment in 'softer' skills of community engagement in an explicit and unequivocal endorsement and prioritisation by the government to invest in 'green' infrastructure,
Housing
The COVID-19 ‘crisis’ has, like all crisis, exposed the appalling inequalities present in our cities, where the life expectancy of those living in ‘more deprived’ areas (ie. the poor) has always been significantly lower than those living in wealthier areas (ie. the wealthy) (Office for National Statistics, 2018). This is reflected in the energy inefficient, poorly designed, and cheaply built housing stock (BRE, 2016). If we focus on issues around the conditions and provision of social housing, we can address several of the questions for the recovery. As Architects for Social Housing (ASH) have been arguing for the past 5 years, and most recently in their text ‘For a Socialist architecture’ the only truly sustainable economy must engage with the environmental, political and social totality or it will only exacerbate existing inequalities. Any economic stimulus packages NOT in line with the circular economy and sustainable development goals will ultimately do more harm than good. A recent cross-party group of MPs have acknowledged that adequate and increased funding for social housing must be an essential part of our economic recovery. (Barker, 2020)
A comprehensive programme of domestic retrofitting to bring homes on council and social housing estates up to a new standard of energy efficiency and improved performance environmental overall, to match recent incentives such as the green homes grant recently given to private homeowners is essential to ensure the UK’s commitment to meeting its international requirements as discussed by both Local Authority councils and housing association in a recent article in Inside housing (https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/housing-association-says-zero-carbon-will-cost-20000-per-home-66885)
The green construction board state that 35-40% of UK carbon emissions are caused by carbon emissions of buildings in use and a further 5-10% are a result of the processes of production of the built environment. (Hurst, 2019). “A Conservative estimate for the embodied carbon of Central Hill estate (476 homes) has been estimated to be around 7000 tonnes of CO2e” Model environments, Dec 2016 (ASH, 2018). On demolition: “Even if you build a super-efficient home it could take 30 years before you redress the balance.” Chris Joffe, Building Retrofit leader, Urups. We must invest in the refurbishment of our existing housing estates to improve their environmental performance without unleashing the devastating social, economic, and environmental costs of demolition.
Furthermore, this will help decrease levels of energy and fuel poverty using specifically directed programmes to redesign and financially support home improvements (Sovacool and Dworkin, 2015). Reductions in energy and fuel poverty would also decrease some of the economic pressures on other institutions such as the NHS and social care services via a reduction in the incidence of many preventable diseases (Public Health England, 2014), while at the same time boosting employment markets for materials and labour of such ‘retrofitting’ technologies.
Recommendations:
1) Retrofitting beginning at a local level developed through local manufacturers and businesses to help stimulate localised economies.
2) Increased investment for social and council housing retrofitting in the medium to long term, noting it is most cost effective and socially and environmentally sustainable way to provide good quality low cost low carbon homes: the most environmentally efficient home is the one that is already built.
3) Elimination of VAT on refurbishments to encourage more retrofitting.
4) All demolition projects MUST provide an environmental impact statement which calculates the amount of embodied carbon in the existing buildings and this must be factored into the whole life carbon cost of any development
5) Holding housing design and building companies to account for maintaining BREEAM approved design standards to meet energy efficiency and thermal comfort obligations.
6) Prioritise the increase of council owned housing to offer low cost, healthy and regulated housing to those who are living in unhealthy, under-regulated and overpriced private rental housing. The most efficient way to achieve this is to increase the density of existing housing estates as demonstrated in the Costs of Estate Regeneration (ASH 2018)
International Obligations
As a host of the COP26 and its G7 Presidency, there is no better and more convincing declaration of leadership to develop a meaningful, well-planned and thorough strategy to tackle a systemic problem in a systemic manner. This means that the growth of the economy is inconsistent with the protection of the environment when the priority is endless pursuit of economic growth using unsustainable natural resources. It has long been established that one of the most effective and efficient ways to change systems is to change the paradigms which maintain the old dysfunctional system. We must consider how an alternate economic model that enhances and expands renewable energies and reduces the reliance on unsustainable fossil fuels to ensure the UK meets its international environmental goals, targets, and legal obligations.
Recommendations:
1) Each ministry and governmental department should be beholden and held to account by select committees to demonstrate how it is upholding at least three of the seventeen SDGs as appropriate to its remit.
2) Encourage the implementation of at least one operationally relevant SDG in the core mission of that ministry or department.
3) Adherence to and progress towards these selected SDGs must form part of the performance monitoring and evaluation plans, consistent with the KPIs articulated by the UN.
Pollution and Waste Crime
Regulatory bodies need to be given more 'teeth', and it needs to become far costlier for corporations to pollute and breach regulations which tends to be written off as a cost of doing business. Tax incentives and the ‘nudge’ effect will be a useful attraction to 'nudge' businesses into reducing their environmental footprint, while committed to economic growth.
The UK has a history of exporting its waste to often underdeveloped nations (Liu et al, 2018). In doing so, the environmental problems are transferred outside of the UK to other countries in a form of unequal ecological exchange (Jorgenson, 2006). The UK must acknowledge that this is both unsustainable and exacerbates the harmful ecological consequences outside of its borders (Rucevska et al, 2015). The UK must recognise its role in this global waste problem. To demonstrate its commitment to its environmental goals, government should develop a similar and more robust waste management plan not unlike the EU waste management system, to improve resource efficiency and increase a waste circular economy package (Ragossnig and Schneider, 2019).
We have seen a significant change in consumer practices and the sustainable use of goods during COVID19. Yet we have seen the well documented images of littering and fly tipping in response to closures of recycling sites amongst other reasons. Finding alternatives to criminal sanctions could be an option. Instead, we should focus on reducing plastic goods and packaging as well as education programmes from primary school level on sustainability and environmental change (Knickmeyer, 2020).
Personal recyclable behaviour is an important element to protect the environmental. However, individuals should not bare the force of the law in relation to waste crime which evidence suggests lacks real progress in confronting waste crime (Cole, 2017). COVID19 has demonstrated potential for shifting high intensity short life consumer practices to long life products. We recognise that large corporate actors such as Morrison’s, are expanding operations so that these sustainable practices are implemented. Given small businesses are encouraged under current government plans, it is important to enhance support to these small businesses, increasing consumer choice and diversifying economic prosperity to local communities.
Recommendations:
1) Invest in Recyclable and multi-use/refillable goods small businesses and support.
2) Promote local level small business expansion including small business loans and other financial support.
3) Develop education programmes and campaigns to increase recycling and knowledge of recycling.
4) Where feasible, implement deposit and refund-upon-return schemes for appropriate types of packaging (e.g., bottles).
Higher Education Sector
Greening the Covid-19 Recovery will require new levels of innovation and research as well as trialling, testing and implementation of initiatives with industry and wider society.
A combination of working at grassroots levels with local communities and different tiers of the business sector will be needed to create the levels of knowledge exchange and the change in behaviours required to create long-term impact. Universities with their predisposition to re-examine, re-consider, and re-invent (Faust, 2010) are uniquely placed to deliver the required responses to the recovery of the Covid-19 crisis.
The growth of the public engagement agenda in United Kingdom universities in recent years (Owen et al, 2016) has enabled higher education to become a trusted key actor between government, local authorities and civil society. Universities are embedded in their cities and regions and are tasked with a multi-faceted agenda (Ransom, 2017). They are a driver of the local economy as well as training workforces for prosperity and work to deliver social mobility, particularly in areas of high deprivation. This unique, autonomous, role allows institutions to be responsive and give voice to communities as well as play a leadership role in recommending the policy direction of local and national government with evidence. During the Covid-19 pandemic, De Montfort University has been able to work with front-line community organisations and the City Mayor’s Office in Leicester, acting as a conduit for communicating new ideas. The aim of this work is to support a long-term, sustainable recovery for the city of Leicester and county of Leicestershire (Martin, 2020). More than 70 academics have worked alongside 60 community groups, politicians and council officers to create a pathway document as a guide for the city to come out of the pandemic stronger and more resilient.
Feedback from community groups and politicians have praised the university’s nimble-footedness in its approach to bringing the public and local leaders together to identify projects that should be co-created to trial and test innovations for a greener recovery.
Using the opportunities presented by the pandemic, the university followed the United Nation’s call to find new ways of working with a ‘Build Back Better Model’ (UN, 2020). Building Back Better (BBB) was popularised during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, where it was recognised that the period immediately following disaster is the optimal time to make changes (Kennedy et al 2008). The university as a UNAI Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) hub for SDG 16 has used the UN’s framework of SDG 17 targets and indicators as a means of working towards a greener, more inclusive economy and to create a stronger, more resilient society. This framework has been a useful tool as a commonly accepted and understandable approach to creating sustainability amongst researchers and collaborators.
Recommendations:
1) Recognise and support universities’ unique positions in their cities and regions as drivers of change.
2) Stimulate the university-public engagement agenda through clearer policy direction and investment.
3) Invest in public engagement initiatives that allow communities to create and test their own green solutions with universities.
4) Increase investment in knowledge exchange initiatives to stimulate further working between the public and private sector and researchers on green innovations.
Community Engagement & Environmental Justice
Government has announced a £40 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund to help charities and environmental organisations start work on projects across England to restore nature and tackle climate change. This welcome opportunity can build on the community response to COVID19. We have seen the growth of localised support groups not seen since World War Two. This has been vital in supporting and maintain community spirit during this time.
COVID19 has highlighted some of the stark inequalities that still exist within the UK today. For example, we have seen clear evidence of the unequal distribution of COVID19 in ethnic minority communities. Importantly, these are the result of multiple interacting variables including existing health inequalities, structural racism, geographic location, and occupation. Coupled with the mobilisation of the Black Lives Matter Movement, the UK should use this moment to come to terms with its history, the existing racial inequalities, and foster solutions and plans to address this inequality. Subsequently, any green recovery and prosperity intersects with multiple identities (ethnicity, gender, class) protecting human and environmental life.
Environmental justice is based on the principle that all people have a right to be protected from environmental pollution and to live in and enjoy a clean and healthful environment. This means equal protection of all populations and the involvement in the development and implementation of environmental laws, regulations and policies (Agyeman and Evans, 2004). This must be considered in the process of just sustainable development ensuring a better quality of life for the entire eco-system. This can be done in two ways. 1) address the disproportional impact of environmental harms on marginalised groups. And 2) address the environmental and economic instabilities and inequalities between groups that unfairly burden marginalised communities. This requires an instrumental approach to increase community participation and empower citizens to drive forward a sustainable agenda.
Recommendations:
1) Investment in community projects and campaigns connecting humans with the natural environment.
2) Reconsider any future developments of natural gas extraction and similar industries recognising the opportunity for transforming and changing the economy during this time.
Conclusion
These recommendations would demonstrate that the UK, 1) takes its legal obligations seriously in terms of the requirements of the 2008 Climate Change Act, 2) continues and could become a world leader through its implementation and endorsement of the UN SDGs, 3) can by opting to challenge the issues raised above, be a meaningful actor on the world stage. Importantly, we must recognise that industries dependent on coal and other fossil fuels at their current levels are incompatible with meeting the carbon reduction targets. This is a perfect opportunity to help upskill those industry actors to a more carbon neutral, and environmentally friendly approach to production and consumption processes. Any post-COVID recovery that is green must then be sincere in embracing a more sustainable future and demonstrating committed leadership from the front and moving away from its old reputation as the ‘sick’ or ‘dirty’ man of Europe.
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August 2020
