News & Insight

16 July 2013

There is a debate beginning in the international community about what will replace the millennium development goals (MDGs) in 2015. Central to this debate is how to integrate sustainable development within the poverty reduction agenda embodied in the MDGs. It...

15 July 2013

Transport emissions are responsible for more than a fifth of the UK’s contribution to climate change. Ministers have failed to deliver the step change needed to tackle this environmental crisis, despite the coalition agreement pledge “to make the transport sector greener...

12 July 2013

George Osborne has rejected outright the possibility of further tax rises as part of the government’s fiscal consolidation programme. Analysing the forecasts for government borrowing the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) recently said that in order to relieve pressure on...

10 July 2013

There have been concerns from some environmentalists that Labour doesn’t ‘get’ the importance of political leadership on climate change. Any such fears can now be banished after Ed Ball’s speech to the Green Alliance. It was a speech about infrastructure that...

10 July 2013

Political controversy over the trade union political levy is nothing new. Stanley Baldwin made a powerful speech in its defence in 1924, in response to a Tory private members bill which sought to legislate for union members contracting in rather...

6 July 2013

It is a troubling conclusion that the environmental movement has been unable to capitalise on overwhelming evidence in favour of dramatic co2 emissions reductions. In the same way that the financial crisis did not automatically improve the fortunes of the...