Devolution: a win-win for climate and the economy?

Can devolution help regions achieve their climate ambitions? Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission (YHCC) has submitted a response to the government’s Devolution White Paper, which we developed in conversations with our Commissioners and the region’s local and combined authorities. 

As we set out in Our Carbon Story, Yorkshire & Humber needs to decarbonise four times faster than the business-as-usual rate. It is also, in common with other regions, not adapting quickly enough to the risks of climate change, with local authorities struggling to start their climate adaptation journeys (as described in this Briefing Note, presented to MPs recently).  

Broadly, our response to the White Paper is that devolution offers a mechanism to support larger-than-local collaboration and investment, but that the proposals do not adequately equip local and strategic authorities to address key climate challenges at the scale and pace required.  

Specifically, there is no mention of climate adaptation, despite the urgency of this issue and the scope for devolved regional investment in it. 

Strategic alignment and integrated funding settlements have the potential to provide real benefits for enabling climate action. This would work best through shared approaches across multiple strategic authorities to support and de-risk private investment.  

Crucial carbon reduction interventions such as large-scale retrofit of older housing stock, and significant shift in travel choices from private car towards public and active modes, are examples of where local and combined authorities urgently want to progress, but require more decisive national leadership to support them. 

We have identified four key climate action priorities where devolution proposals need to be strengthened. 

Placemaking 

Strategic authorities, collaborating with each other to establish regionwide standards and economies of scale, should support complementary policies and pooled resources for climate-responsive development. For example, neighbouring Strategic Development Strategies could adopt shared benchmark place-making principles that set energy efficiency standards, protect people from climate impacts, provide open spaces that are accessible, healthy and biodiverse, and create walkable neighbourhoods that encourage non-car travel for local journeys. 

These principles will be expressed differently in different places but would give a strong strategic direction for public and private actors and help to give confidence to investment decisions. 

Climate Adaptation 

Local and strategic authorities would benefit from a new statutory duty for climate adaptation, so long as they are properly resourced and empowered to deliver it. Our Yorkshire and Humber Climate Action Plan calls for an ‘adapt to a 2ºC increase, prepare for a 4ºC increase’ principle across the region. A statutory duty would enable shared, planned scenarios across all forms of infrastructure with agreement from regulators and combined and local authorities. It would also create plans with enough longevity that each provider, regardless of their investment cycle, can contribute to the same aims.  

In our view, putting climate adaptation on a statutory footing is essential to its success, and both the Devolution Bill and the Planning & Infrastructure Bill provide opportunities to do so.  

Land, water, food and nature 

Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission advocates a region-wide approach to land use and water management that enables restoration of habitats and carbon stores, supports renewable energy, provides sustainable housing and secures resilient food production in the changing climate. That means the multifunctional potential of land must be fully embraced in decision-making.  

This is critical to those areas of our region where agriculture is both a dominant land use and fundamental to the economy, and also where the challenges of river and tidal flooding are most pressing. It will be particularly important for the newly-forming Strategic Authorities in Hull & East Riding and in Greater Lincolnshire.  

More than 60% of land in our existing, more urban authorities is in countryside, and devolution must support rural economies if it is to be politically successful.  

Tackling Inequalities 

There remain deep spatial inequalities within and between regions, and the social and economic impacts of climate change are felt more deeply in places where the economy is struggling.  

We have expressed concerned that the UK Industrial Strategy is alarmingly silent about the Humber area, which is home to the highest emitting industrial cluster in the UK and has extensive decarbonisation plans. How high-emitting industries are supported to decarbonise, and the consequences across their supply chains, will shape whether climate action helps or harms affected communities.  

Local growth plans should be explicitly required not just to promote growth sectors, but also to address the long-term imperatives of tackling inequalities and adapting to the challenges of the changing climate, if they are to produce sustainable outcomes. The ‘health in all policies’ approach, and new statutory duty for reducing health inequalities, is a welcome and important step. Our region’s Directors of Public Health are clear that climate is a health issue; and there is compelling evidence that the benefits to the economy of climate mitigation measures are justifiable on health grounds alone.   

Conclusion 

Places need to be able to lead and innovate, not follow at the place of the slowest. Most local and combined authorities have net zero targets significantly earlier than the national 2050 date. The White Paper cites York & North Yorkshire’s Routemap to Carbon Negative 2040 (currently being updated) as an example of devolution in action, which is an encouraging sign that the government does want to enable leadership in this field.  

If devolution can unlock the investment needed to implement such changes, then that would be a major win-win for climate and economy. YHCC asks that further consideration be given to new statutory duties for emissions reduction and climate adaptation to provide a robust legislative framework within which strategic and local authorities can more effectively attract investment and set local policy. 

Image:  York, by Pete from Pixabay