Climate and Nature Bill


The Climate and Nature Bill, formerly the Climate and Ecology Bill, is a private member's bill before the Parliament of the United Kingdom aimed at tackling the climate and ecological emergencies through an integrated approach. Similar iterations of the current bill have come before Parliament multiple times previously.
The bill was most recently introduced in the House of Commons by Roz Savage on 16 October 2024 who said that the proposed legislation "has the ability to make the UK a world leader in tackling the climate-nature crisis, delivering a comprehensive, joined up plan that is finally aligned with what the science says is necessary. It can pave the way for a truly just transition and ensure that citizens have a real say in deciding a fair way forward".
If enacted, the bill would ensure that the UK Government:
Over the 2019–24 Parliament, the bill was presented twice by Caroline Lucas. In the 2019–2021 session, the first reading of the bill took place on 2 September 2020, and it did not progress further.
In the 2021–22 session, the first reading of the bill took place on 21 June 2021. Its second reading was postponed and rescheduled for 6 May 2022, and it did not progress further.
In the 2022–23 session, the bill was introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Redesdale via the private members' bill ballot route. Its first reading was on 21 May 2022, second reading was on 15 July 2022, committee stage was on 18 November 2022, report stage was on 25 January 2023, and third reading was on 21 April 2023. After passing the Lords, Wera Hobhouse 'carried over' the bill to the Commons, and it did not progress further.File:Screenshot-362-800x0-c-default.jpg|alt=Members of the Shadow ESNZ and EFRA Teams supporting Olivia Blake's introduction of the Bill: Alex Sobel, Olivia Blake, Daniel Zeichner, Ed Miliband, Baroness Blake, Jim McMahon, Kerry McCarthy.|thumb|270x270px|Members of the Shadow ESNZ and EFRA Teams supporting Olivia Blake's introduction of the Bill: Alex Sobel, Olivia Blake, Daniel Zeichner, Ed Miliband, Baroness Blake, Jim McMahon and Kerry McCarthy.
In the same 2022-23 session, the bill was introduced in the Commons by Olivia Blake via a ten-minute rule motion on 10 May 2023, when the Labour Party offered their support for its "ambition and objectives".
In the 2023–24 session, the bill was presented by Alex Sobel on 21 March 2024. Its second reading was scheduled for 17 May 2024, and it did not progress further.
The Conservative Government did not offer its support for the bill over 2019–2024.
In the current session of the 2024-29 Parliament, Roz Savage introduced the bill on 16 October 2024 having been drawn third in the private members' bill ballot. Unlike earlier attempts to advance the proposed legislation, Savage was given priority time on a sitting Friday. Its second reading took place on 24 January 2025—and after a division in the Commons—the bill was adjourned until 11 July 2025, when it was again rescheduled for 29 May 2026.
The Labour Government has not offered its support for the bill. On 24 January, the Minister for Nature, Mary Creagh, assured supporting MPs—though the Government would not allow the bill to progress—that next steps would include "binding commitments" to advance the bill's objectives.
Following the adjournment, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, issued via a video on the social media channel, X, promising to set to work on the "spirit and substance" of the bill—"including for legislation"—in order to "make a meaningful difference" for climate and nature. He updated MPs on progress in the first annual State of Climate and Nature statement on 14 July.
It is not clear if the bill will return in the next session of the 2025–2029 Parliament.

Objectives

A Climate and Nature Act would require the Secretary of State to achieve climate and nature targets for the UK, and implement a strategy to achieve those targets. It would establish a climate and nature assembly to advise in the creation that strategy, and give duties to the Climate Change Committee and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee regarding the strategy and targets.
The House of Commons Library has produced briefing note which explores the bill's aim—to ensure that policy and action on the climate and nature crises is science-led and people-oriented—and outlines its proposed duties on the Government and advisory and monitoring bodies to achieve its targets through the delivery of a integrated strategy.
The Zero Hour campaign, which promotes the bill, has also produced a briefing note, outlining its objectives as:
  • creating a joined up strategy, as the climate and nature crises are intertwined, and tackling them requires a plan that considers both together
  • cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the UK's Paris Agreement-aligned Nationally Determined Contributions—expanded to include international aviation and shipping—and by ending fossil fuel production and imports as rapidly as possible
  • halting and reversing nature's decline across the UK by 2030—in line with the mission of the Global Biodiversity Framework—and prioritising nature in decision-making
  • taking responsibility for Britain's overseas emissions and ecological footprints
  • ensuring no-one and no community is left behind in a nature-positive just transition—by giving citizens a say in finding a fair way forward—via a climate and nature assembly.

    2019–2024 Parliament

2019–2021 session

Bill 172

In the 2019–2021 session, Caroline Lucas presented the bill on 2 September 2020. It received its first reading the same day. Its scheduled second reading of 12 March 2021 did not take place. 11 MPs co-sponsored the bill: Alan Brown, Claire Hanna, Wera Hobhouse, Clive Lewis, Liz Saville Roberts, Stephen Farry, Ben Lake, Tommy Sheppard, Alex Sobel, Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome.
Lucas also tabled a corresponding, cross-party early day motion—EDM 832—about the bill on 2 September 2020. It was supported by 92 MPs and called on the Conservative Government to support the bill, noting its enactment would:
Ensure that the UK plays its fair and proper role in limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C by taking account of the UK's entire carbon footprint, including consumption emissions released overseas as a result of goods manufactured abroad for use in the UK, that it would actively improve the natural world by protecting and restoring the UK's ecosystems, and end the damage to nature caused by supply chains.

Lucas led a debate on the UK's response to the climate and ecological emergency on 9 February 2021. She called for immediate and ambitious action, two years on from Parliament's declaration of an environment and climate emergency on 1 May 2019. In it, she highlighted that escalating global crises—record heat, wildfires, melting ice caps, and "one million species facing extinction"—emphasised the need for UK leadership ahead of COP26 and COP15. She said that:
The scale and ramifications of the emergency require us to set aside party differences, and reach for the new vision of human prosperity that we know is possible. With sufficient political will, we can co-operate to ensure we all thrive within the limits of our planet—but that is not going to happen without new legislation that gives us a framework commensurate with the science and with reality. The is that new legislation. It brings the future into the present—and our responsibility to the future into the present, too. recognise that the climate-nature crisis is bigger than any one political ideology, on legislation that could be a new and desperately needed global first.

Lucas also criticised the UK's "inconsistent" domestic climate policies—arguing that the Climate Change Act is "out of date" as scientists had warned about rising emissions in light of the shrinking global carbon budget. She stressed nature's "absence" from climate strategies, despite the UK's "severe" biodiversity loss—and called for citizen engagement via assemblies, as seen in the work of Climate Assembly UK. Lucas also advocated updating UK legislation to reflect science, equity, and public involvement for a just transition, warning of "systemic collapse" without it. Supporting MPs echoed her urgency, while the Conservative Minister—Anne-Marie Trevelyan—defended the UK's net zero progress and Ten Point Plan, promising "global leadership".
Other MPs pressed the Conservative Government to support the bill, including David Linden and Rachael Maskell. Energy Ministers' responses asserted that the Government was aiming for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as set in 2019, and that as the "first major economy to legislate in this way"—as Energy Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, said on 8 October 2021—the UK was a "global leader".

Environment Bill: proposed amendments

In the 2019–2021 session, supportive MPs also focussed on securing amendments to the Conservative Government's Environment Bill in order to reflect proposals in the bill. In a cross-party initiative led by Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Daniel Zeichner of Labour's Shadow EFRA Team, two amendments proposed at committee stage on 26 November 2020, but were not successful.
The first, new clause 28, set out new statutory environmental objectives and commitments for the Secretary of State and for the new Office for Environmental Protection. New clause 29 would have required the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the adequacy of environmental legislation and policy for meeting the climate and ecology challenges faced by the UK and the world. Zeichner said that:
We have taken a number of these ideas from the , which believes is right to place emphasis on the importance of expanding and enhancing natural ecosystems and agroecosystems to safeguard their capacity as carbon sinks, as well as on the need to restore biodiverse habits and their soils. Out there, in the world, there is an appetite for this more ambitious approach.

A further amendment was tabled at report stage, new clause 9, which was the same as new clause 28 during committee. It was debated on 26 January 2021 and referred to by several MPs, including Lucas, Ben Lake and Debbie Abrahams —but was not pushed to a division.
Taking inspiration from the bill, Lord Teverson proposed defining the purpose of the Environment Bill as addressing "the biodiversity and climate emergency" and requiring "the Prime Minister declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency, domestically and globally".
The clause was added to the Environment Bill by Peers during its passage through the Lords—and during 'ping pong' between the Houses— Lord Deben said that refusing to accept it would "send the wrong signal", at a time when "we should be united in sending the right signals, so that in all discussions people will know precisely where Britain stands". Though Peers insisted on the clause, it was ultimately removed by MPs, and the then Minister for Nature, Rebecca Pow, said that:
Actions are what are necessary to combat the climate and biodiversity emergency—not legal declarations".