The UK is on track to miss a whole range of environmental targets in the early 2020s, including many that are legally binding and come from the EU, according to an analysis by Unearthed and the Financial Times.

In a decade that saw David Cameron promise to lead “the greenest government ever” and Theresa May pledge to “leave the environment in a better state than we found it”, and Boris Johnson promise to “do extraordinary things on the environment”, the data tells a different story.

The analysis of performance against existing targets comes amidst uncertainty over the future of the UK’s environmental regulation.

Boris Johnson recently scrapped a commitment to meet EU environmental standards post-Brexit. The change to Theresa May’s deal mean that though EU standards have already been transposed into UK legislation many could be undone in future.

Tom West, UK environment lead at Clientearth, told Unearthed that: “without a separate binding obligation not to row back from existing environmental standards, there is a risk that the government could relax commitments relatively easily, in the future. That’s why we need a legal commitment to non-regression on environmental standards in primary legislation.”

Moreover, the oversight role of the EU Commission and courts will cease to exist at the end of the transition period.

The government has set out plans for a new environmental watchdog – the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) – but it won’t have the power that the EU has had to impose hefty fines on the government. It could, however, bring legal proceedings against a public authority regarding an alleged breach of environmental law, through a mechanism in the Upper Tribunal called “environmental review”.

Air pollution

The UK’s most prominent failure to meet EU derived targets is probably air pollution.

The government has been breaching EU standards on nitrogen dioxide concentrations for years, and has been held to account for it in the courts, but less well covered is its record on total emissions (as opposed to the concentration in the air). This is tracked through the EU’s National Emissions Ceiling Directive, which set targets for 2020 for five pollutants: nitrogen oxides (NOx), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ammonia (NH3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

Official projections anticipate that the UK will meet its commitments on the first three of those pollutants, but miss those for ammonia and PM2.5 – the most damaging pollutant of all to human health.