The High Court has ruled that the UK government’s climate strategy is not fit-for-purpose, breaching the UK Climate Change Act.
A legal challenge to the government’s Net Zero Strategy, brought by Client Earth, Friends of the Earth and Good Law Project, has been successful. The court found that the strategy doesn’t meet the legal obligations of the Climate Change Act 2008. In July 2022 a court found that the government’s original net zero strategy was inadequate and was mandated by a judge to produce another strategy. This too has now been found to not meet its legal obligations.
In its policy paper published last March, the RCP called for the government to strengthen the Net Zero Strategy to ensure there is a robust and credible pathway for reaching the UK’s emission reduction targets by 2050 at the very latest.
In response to the ruling, Chair of the RCP’s advisory group on Sustainability in Healthcare and Climate Change Professor Ramesh Arasaradnam said: “Climate change is the biggest threat to human health. This is the second time that the government’s net zero strategy has failed to meet legal obligations – it must now deliver a robust and credible pathway for reaching UK emission reduction targets.”