How We Fell Behind: From Pesticides to Clean Air – Where People and Wildlife Are at Greater Risk

From putting rare species at risk by ditching the habitats directive to failing to keep up with chemicals regulations that keep people and wildlife safe, here are some areas in which the UK has fallen behind:

- Helena Horton

Protecting rare creatures

When the UK was in the EU, it was under the habitats directive, which meant developers were not allowed to negatively affect the habitats of rare creatures such as nightingales, dormice and red squirrels without mitigation on the same site. Labour is ripping this up with its planning and infrastructure bill, which allows developers to pay into a general nature fund rather than keeping or creating new habitat nearby to make up for what is destroyed.

Water policy

The UK has failed to put into practice new, stronger obligations the EU has levied on water companies and municipal areas to keep sewage, chemicals and other pollution out of rivers and seas. The main divergence is with the 2024 urban wastewater treatment directive that the EU has introduced. This applies stricter treatment standards to water in urban areas, including the removal of micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals and microplastics.

There are also rules the UK still officially falls under, such as the water framework directive, which asks all EU member states to clean up their rivers by a certain point. However, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has found England is falling behind, and is unlikely to meet its targets. It has said England will miss them by a "considerable" margin.

Its main target under regulations related to the water framework directive is to bring 77% of surface water bodies into good ecological status by 2027. In reality, this figure could be as low as 21%. In light of these findings, the OEP has launched an investigation into possible failures of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency to comply with the water framework directive. Without the threat of punishment from the EU, there are few consequences for ignoring the directive.

Clean air