On 11 October 2025 Dawn Media and Breathe Pakistan convened a major conference on air pollution in Lahore, Pakistan.
On 26 June 2025 as part of London Climate Action Week https://www.londonclimateactionweek.org I attended the launch of the 7th edition of this hugely important and influential report and resource at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/ .
It was great to make a first visit to Accra and Ghana in mid April 2025 to contribute to a workshop on nuclear liability as part of the European Commission programme in support of Ghana’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, led by friends and colleagues from Vienna. I did sessions on nuclear liability, and on nuclear transport.
From 28 to 30 January 2025 the UK and the EU were in an arbitration hearing in the Hague. The hearing concerned the UK and Scottish governments’ decision to ban sandeel fishing in certain areas of the Dogger Bank
On 8 January 2024, the UK Parliament will be asked to vote on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill.
This will amend the UK’s Petroleum Act 1998, and require the Oil and Gas Authority, also known as the North Sea Transition Authority, to run an annual process inviting applications for new oil and gas production licences.
On 11 December 2023, the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Steve Barclay announced changes to the Variable Monetary Penalties that the Environment Agency can impose. This means that companies in breach of Environmental Permits in key areas could be subject to unlimited financial penalties, replacing the earlier cap of £250,000.
It was really welcome to be able to attend an online briefing this week by the Welsh Government Bill team working on proposals for the Environmental Governance and Biodiversity Targets Bill, along with representatives of the UK Environmental Law Association ‘UKELA’ Wales Working Party, NGOs and other stakeholders.
The UK has lost nearly half of its biodiversity since the Industrial Revolution. It has fared worse in this respect than most countries in the EU, the G7 and China. It is consistently in the bottom 10% of nations in the Biodiversity Intactness Index. According to the Royal Society, the abundance of the UK’s estimated 70,000 known species of animals, plants, funghi and microorganisms is declining.
In December 2022, chaired by China and hosted by Canada, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity reached agreement on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework an ambitious set of commitments aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity loss and the accelerating rate of species extinctions now thought to threaten 1 million species.
I recently had the opportunity to join a guided walk across chalk grassland at the National Trust’s site at Devil’s Dyke and Saddlescombe Farm, near Brighton in Sussex, led by the Trust’s Lead Ranger Dan Fagan. It was a reminder of how much more you can see and learn about in the company of an expert guide. As well as enjoying spectacular countryside and views, we learned about the huge pressures on England’s chalk grassland, 80% of which has been lost since the 1940s, and the real value of this critical habitat.
