The Bishop of Exeter received the following written answer on 17th April 2023:
The Lord Bishop of Exeter asked His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage dairy farmers to undertake a Greenhouse Gas Protocol audit.
Lord Benyon (Con): In the Net Zero Growth Plan, we have committed to developing a harmonised approach to measuring carbon on farms and will set out how we will support farmers to undertake carbon audits by 2024.
On 30th March 2023 the House of Lords held a short debate on a Motion from Lord Naseby: To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce new economic policies to address the challenges of climate change in developing countries, particularly those that are members of the Commonwealth.
The Archbishop of Canterbury: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for tabling this Question. In his travelogue, he mentioned, to my alarm, the areas for which I am directly responsible—I suppose because they could not go anywhere else—notably, the Falkland Islands, Antarctica, Sri Lanka and Bermuda; I do not know what is going to happen to Kent.
The OECD’s most recent States of Fragility report found that, in 2022, 23% of the world’s population were living in fragile contexts, often linked to climate change, but 73% of the world’s extreme poor were. This figure is projected to rise to 86% of the world’s poor on the lowest incomes by 2030. For the Anglican Communion, within 165 countries over 150 of them are affected by such changes.
Continue reading “Archbishop highlights increased risk of climate change-driven conflict and migration”The Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich spoke during a debate on a motion to approve new regulations on direct payments to farmers, highlighting the need for support for farmers to engage with Environmental Land Management Schemes:
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: My Lords, I shall follow the comments that we have just heard. I declare a new interest as the president-elect of the Suffolk Agricultural Association, where we see the issues that have just been described in the uplands similarly in small family farms in Suffolk.
By and large, the farmers that I speak to want to embrace the ELM scheme and many of them are doing so. What those who are embracing it are saying to me about those who are not yet doing so is that somehow the scheme needs to be made more attractive, the incentives need to be increased—particularly for the smaller family farmers—and the process simplified in some way so that they can gain access to the scheme. I understand that His Majesty’s Government are seeking to achieve 80% take-up of ELMS by 2030. I ask the Minister where we are with that at the moment and what he sees as the possibilities of accelerating and incentivising the take-up by those who, as we heard earlier, might need hand-holding in that process.
The Bishop of St Albans asked a question on the government’s assessment of the United Nations World Water Development Report on 28th March 2023:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans: To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the United Nations World Water Development Report, published on 15 March.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con): My Lords, the UK supports the findings of the UN World Water Development Report 2023. We agree that partnership and co-operation are key to achieving sustainable development goal 6: equitable access to water and sanitation for all. However, delivery is far off track, particularly on accountability, political leadership and finance. At last week’s UN water conference I called for increased action in these areas and announced a new £18.5 million water sanitation and hygiene—WASH—system for health programme, as well as seed funding for a new £38 million water programme.
Continue reading “Bishop of St Albans asks about United Nations World Water Development Report”
The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 22nd February 2023:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government whether they have held any discussions with BP following reports that the company will fail to meet its climate targets; and what steps they are taking to promote sustainability in oil companies.
Continue reading “Bishop of St Albans asks about sustainability targets for oil companies”The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 20th February 2023:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support biodiversity in Hertfordshire.
Lord Benyon (Con): In England we have set four legally binding targets for biodiversity:
– By 2030: to halt the decline in species abundance
– By 2042: to reverse declines; to reduce the risk of species extinction; and to restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat.
Continue reading “Bishop of St Albans asks about biodiversity in Hertfordhire”On 18th January 2023, the Bishop of Carlisle asked a question on changes to the Localism Act 2011 to better enable national parks to engage in conservation:
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle: My Lords, some of our national parks believe that they could better address climate and nature emergencies if they were added to the list of authorities which have a general power of competence under the Localism Act 2011. Can the Minister tell us whether His Majesty’s Government have any plans to bring that about?
Continue reading “Bishop of Carlisle asks about changes to the Localism Act for national parks”Andrew Selous MP, representing the Church Commissioners, gave the following written answers to questions from MPs on 1st December 2022:
Jim Shannon MP (DUP): To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, whether the Church is taking steps to plant more trees on its land in rural areas.
Andrew Selous MP (Con): During 2021 the Church Commissioners planted approximately 2 million trees across their land holdings. In 2021 the Commissioners also purchased land in Wales with the intention of establishing a new woodland of c.85,000 new trees (subject to the grant of planting permissions).
Continue reading “Church Commissioners Written Answers: Church Land, Environment, Persecuted Christians (Africa and China), Women in Ministry, Equality, Energy”
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham received the following written answer on 8th November 2022:
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham asked His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the partnership between the conservation interests of the RSPB and the business Tarmac in the restoration of reedbeds at Langford Lowfields on the banks of the River Trent; and what steps they are taking to help landowners restore land in similar, environmentally-beneficial ways.
Continue reading “Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham asks about government support for environmental partnerships and land restoration”The Bishop of Oxford tabled a question for short debate on 20th October 2022, concerning the pathway to net zero emissions:
The Lord Bishop of Oxford: To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to support behaviour change as part of the pathway to net zero emissions.
My Lords, I appreciate the time given to this debate, despite all that is happening elsewhere in Westminster today. We face many challenging issues as a country and a world, but none is more serious than climate change and the environmental crisis. The context of our debate is the real prospect of global heating of more than 1.5 degrees by the middle of the century, with escalating extreme weather events in the UK and across the world, rising sea levels, devastating fires and floods, significant loss of life and damage to infrastructure, wars over scarce resources, shifting patterns of harvest, an increase in zoonotic disease and a massive displacement of people as large parts of the earth become uninhabitable.
Your Lordships may well have seen the final episode this week of BBC documentary “Frozen Planet II”, detailing the effects of global warming on people and wildlife. The most sinister pictures for me were of the small bubbles of trapped methane being released in great quantities from the permafrost, with devastating consequences for the earth.
Continue reading “Bishop of Oxford asks about government support for behaviour change on the pathway to net-zero”
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