CLIMATE, NATURE AND GROWTH

That this House welcomes the publication of the UN’s first global assessment of the state of the world’s nature for nearly 15 years; notes its conclusions that 75 per cent of all land and almost half of all marine and water ecosystems have now been seriously altered by humans, and that one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, significantly more than at any other time in human history; further notes that the UN identifies the growth of the global economy, and specifically the growth of material consumption in affluent nations, as one of the major driving forces behind these trends, because of how it affects land use in particular, and that it proposes moving away from endless consumption and GDP as a key measure of economic success; welcomes the growing cross party political consensus on the need for honesty about the magnitude of the environmental challenges faced by the UK; considers that an economy predicated on ever increasing growth is incompatible with the scale of response needed to the emergency facing our global climate and our natural world; further considers that humans and nature would flourish in economies designed around wellbeing as opposed to infinite consumption; and therefore calls on the Government to urgently show global leadership in developing and advocating alternatives to GDP and in the transition to economies that, rather than being divisive and degenerative by default, are distributive and regenerative by design.