Politics and Expertise: New Environmental Targets in English Environmental Law
Forthcoming in Chris Hilson and Josephine van Zeben (eds), A Research Agenda for Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2024)
Faculty of Laws University College London Law Research Paper No. 22/2023
10 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2023
Date Written: November 7, 2023
Abstract
This chapter explores the legally binding environmental targets set under the Environment Act 2021, in the context of the broad literature on expertise and politics. Targets play a range of positive roles, but the discussion here raises some important challenges, including around performativity, selectivity and fragmentation, as well as the conundrum posed by the inherent simplification of targets – simplification being both the major limitation and also the great power of targets. Opening-up the setting and the implementation of targets to scrutiny and debate would enhance their ability to serve as moments for deliberation over and iteration of environmental ambition and its social effects. This requires, as a minimum, strong procedural environmental law. Far from strengthening procedural law, ongoing erosion of procedural environmental law in the UK is justified in part by the existence of targets, bringing out targets’ potentially populist side, alongside their more obvious technocratic underpinnings.
Keywords: Environmental Targets; Environment Act 2021; Climate Change Act 2008; Process; Procedural law
JEL Classification: K10, K20, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation