The Loss of the Sustainable Development Commission

Just weeks into its new spell in government, the new coalition has started to make cut backs to save the money it needs to pay off the deficit and shortfall created by the recent recession. Although the government has pledged to be one of the greenest – i.e. the most environmentally conscious and responsible – one of its first moves in money saving has angered many environmentalists.

In July, the UK government decided to axe the funding that enables the Sustainable Development Commission to operate, saving around £3 million per year. A substantial saving, but rather a strange one as the role of the commission in suggesting ways that the government can save money by reducing the energy it uses and the waste it produces have saved around £60 to £70 million pounds over the last 12 months. The worry is that further suggestions that the Commission could have made will now not even be thought of, never mind implemented, so saving £3 million pounds could prove a very costly mistake.

Saving Money or Saving Face?

Some critics point to the previous stance of the Sustainable Development Commission in being quite vocal and open in its opinions of where the previous government was going wrong in terms of energy efficiency and dealing with waste in government. This was a key part of their remit as they were independent of the government and so not tied to portraying its actions in a positive light. By producing detailed and hard hitting reports, the Sustainable Development Commission played an important role in forcing government departments to be much more rigorous in the way they approached energy and waste. This has made the commission rather unpopular with some politicians, which may be the real reason behind the withdrawal of funding.

Projected Savings

In its last major report before the announcement that it is to be scrapped, the Sustainable Development Commission showed that making improvements in the way that government departments use energy and water, use measures to recycle waste and take more care with travel will still save the government around £350 million over the next five years, even if they don’t implement any new measures. By being more efficient with travel to meetings, for example, the Commission saved nearly £14 million pounds in fuel during one year (2008) alone. The savings in time were also enormous and added up to almost 2 million hours of staff time – time when government employees were free to accomplish other, more worthwhile tasks.

Commission recommendations also reduced the amount of government department-produced waste that ends up in landfill by 120 000 tonnes in 2008 and measures introduced to save water, meant that £13 million pounds was saved in water bills.

The Greenest Ever Government?

The election promise of the new government to be the ‘greenest’ ever will now come under even closer scrutiny, particularly from those who think abolishing the Sustainable Development Commission is a counterproductive move. In responding to the news, the Commissions Chairman Will Day said, “Sustainable development is no peripheral, nice-to-have concept for prosperous times. It is the best way of delivering more for less, while ensuring that the drive for efficiencies doesn’t cost more in the long run.”