A broad group of eighteen civil society organisations has written to Sajid Javid MP ahead of this week’s Spending Review and Budget saying that the government will need to more than double public investment on climate and nature, from the current £17 billion a year to at least £42 billion.

The NGOs are warning the new Chancellor that the government is currently on course to miss its net zero target and burden the next generation with a ‘planet-sized debt’.

The letter calls on Sajid Javid to kickstart an ambitious programme of public investment to boost clean infrastructure in ways that can tackle social inequality, create jobs, improve people’s lives, and protect British wildlife and nature.

The organisations have come up with a costed roadmap to tackle the climate and nature emergency. It estimates the government will need to more than double public investment on climate and nature, from the current £17 billion a year to at least £42 billion, equivalent to about 5% of government spending, if it is to put the UK on track to meet its legally binding net zero target.

Jon Stenning, Head of Environment, Cambridge Econometrics, said:

“Policymakers often talk about the costs of mitigating climate change. However, our analysis shows that such action can also benefit the economy, and early investment can reduce long-term costs of low carbon technologies such as heat pumps. To avoid the worst impacts and costs of climate change, and realise the government’s ambition to lead the global response to climate change, a substantial increase in government support for zero carbon solutions is required.”

The letter also draws attention a comment by Boris Johnson during his leadership campaign which said “if it’s borrowing [that is needed] to finance great infrastructure projects ... to do things for the long-term benefit of the country, then we should do them”.

Polling conducted by Opinium for the NGOs showed that most people (52%) think the government should be spending more on climate and nature, compared to 8% who think we should be spending less. This matches the 52% percent of people who are ‘very concerned’ about climate change, according to a recent ipsosMORI poll, up from just 18% five years ago.

Of those who wanted an increase in the government’s climate and nature spending, 86% would like to see a total in line with these recommendations or higher.

The campaigners are warning the Chancellor that failing to deal with the climate and nature emergency now will be the ‘mother of all false economies’, driving up costs, causing more damage to the natural world, and leaving issues like draughty homes, poor public transport and air pollution unaddressed.

A landmark review carried out by Lord Stern in 2006 estimated that the global economic costs of not tackling climate change would be 5% GDP in 2050, or 11-14% GDP when wider impacts like health were included. Progress since has not been enough to assuage his concerns, and Stern now believes the numbers are likely to be worse.

John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, said:

“Global temperatures, sea levels, and extinction rates are rising relentlessly, and targets alone will not make them stop. No one in government is still trying to argue that this is not an emergency, and yet no one in government is acting as though it is. We are still constantly pumping carbon into the atmosphere, and trying to ignore the problem will leave our children with a damaged world and a planet-sized debt. There’s a strong economic case and an overwhelming moral imperative for the Chancellor to act.”

Tanya Steele, Chief Executive of WWF, said:

“The climate emergency is the biggest environmental crisis of our time. Nature, our planet’s life-support system is in freefall. Heatwaves, droughts and floods are more frequent and more intense because of climate breakdown, putting homes and lives at risk. By destroying our natural world and its resources, we are destroying the very thing we all need to survive and our children’s futures depend on – and this is hitting the poorest hardest and costing the global economy billions each year. Failing to act now would be the mother of all false economies, we must invest in restoring the environment and tackling climate change at home and abroad so that nature can fight back.”

The groups who have written to the Chancellor are: Amnesty International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, The Climate Coalition, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance, Greenpeace UK, UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, Islamic Relief, The National Federation of Women’s Institutes, National Union of Students, Oxfam GB, The Ramblers, The RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trust and WWF-UK.

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