Essential Insights: Environmental politics at the end of the conference season
In 2022, the IES Burntwood Lecture was given by Caroline Lucas. At the time, she was coming to the end of her tenure in Parliament and took the opportunity to reflect on her political work so far and the role she had played in both the Green Party and the wider environmental movement.
The Burntwood Lecture always provides provocative ideas, and as scientists we welcome any chance to be challenged so that we can reach a more complete understanding of how the environment interacts with people’s lives. For example, this year’s lecture by Dr Gemma Harper OBE is provocatively titled What Kind of Creature Loves Nature?, exploring what our relationships with the natural world reveal about ourselves. Book now on the IES website!
Lucas provided just such a provocation, arguing that the environmental movement in the UK has been held up by three pillars: environmental professionals and scientists, nature conservation and campaigning NGOs, and from her own perspective, political movements like the Green Party.
The idea is uncomfortable for many scientists, because the discipline of the scientific method can drive us away from making political judgements, which often go beyond assessing the evidence or evaluating potential solutions.
Yet we need to reckon with the truth that Caroline Lucas gave us: politics is shaping the environment, whether we want it to or not. Some political parties are working towards environmental outcomes while others are contesting the consensus on issues like climate change.
Inevitably, governments emerge from a process of politics, shaped not only by their own supporters but by the rest of politics and the ways that opposition parties influence decisions. After a by-election defeat for the Green Party, we are taking a chance to look at what the future could hold for environmental politics and how it could shape policy outcomes.
Joseph Lewis is Head of Policy at the Institution of Environmental Sciences, working to promote the use of the environmental sciences in decision making. Joseph leads the delivery of the IES Policy Programme, standing up for the voice of science, scientists, and the natural world in policy. He also delivers the IES policy training programme.
Joseph has more than ten years of experience in public policy, including in Parliament and the charity sector. He was recognised on the ENDS Power List 2026 as "a prominent advocate for ensuring environmental science is reflected in public policy".
How do political parties try to influence the Government?
Many political parties aspire to lead the country, become a government, and use their power to enact policy change. Yet for many parties, that aspiration may not be a realistic short-term prospect, so they engage in the process of politics to try to make change happen where they can.
From the perspective of environmental science, we may like some of those changes and we may dislike others. Either way, we need to understand them if we want to know how environmental science can influence policy outcomes.
For parties outside government, their influencing tactics might include:
- Using media, public debates, petitions, polls, social media, or other forms of public engagement to create a sense that the voting public cares about something, to try to lobby the Government to react.
- Cross-party action, where a party attempts to depoliticise an issue so that it appears there is a consensus for action (as opposed to the above methods where the goal is to politicise the issue). Examples include All-Party Parliamentary Groups, caucuses, or joint legislative proposals.
- Direct influence through Parliamentary debates, motions in local authorities (such as Councils), or other forms of political action that can create change, with or without the explicit support of the Government.
These formal routes of influence are important, and they represent the majority of mechanisms for change available for political parties. Yet there are also tools of soft influence which can become important. Political parties are more than institutions; they are organisations filled with people, so when those people interact in very human ways, sometimes less formalised pathways to influence can emerge.
How has the modern Green Party tried to influence outcomes?
Ahead of last week’s Holborn & St Pancras By-election, the Green Party had its annual conference, which amongst many other conversations included a discussion about how the party is trying to influence decisions today.
Zack Polanski, the party’s leader, made a claim in a speech that the potential electoral threat of the Green Party had led to delays in the decision over new oil and gas drilling at Rosebank and Jackdaw. Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has played down the political element of the decision at Labour’s conference and subsequently in Parliament, insisting it is a “quasi-judicial” decision, so Polanski may be wrong about his party's influence, but either way it shows how the Green Party views its role in trying to achieve outcomes (at least for the time being).
Many political parties have had great policy success, even outside of government, by campaigning on specific issues. If a campaign does well, the Government risks losing electoral representatives like Members of Parliament or local Councillors. That pressure makes it more likely that the Government will adjust its position as a result, hoping to lose fewer seats in the future, or to regain political support from its rivals.
Similarly, when Polanski used the opportunity of a keynote speech at Wild Summit 2026 to call for the publication of the full National security assessment on global ecosystems, he was hoping that it could generate electoral pressure for the report to be published. If the Government had caved to the demand, it would generate a political victory for Polanski’s party and it would also produce a policy win.
Trying to evaluate this kind of impact is infinitely messy. From the outside, it’s impossible to know whether delays to the decision on new oil and gas were caused by the Green Party, the mere existence of a by-election, the recent change in Prime Minister, administrative delays in a quasi-judicial process, or any combination of many other factors.
From an environmental perspective, it’s just another complex factor that makes analysing the policy landscape difficult. The role of unpredictable politics is just part of the terrain, so the more we know about what parties want to achieve, the less unpredictable our foresight becomes.
Three futures for environmental politics
In the aftermath of any election loss, no matter how big or small, there are always calls for a change in direction by the political parties involved. Following the results in Holborn & St Pancras, the Green Party leader has confirmed that he will stay on, and that there won’t be a substantial change in course (at least in terms of the party’s approach to the environment).
Yet ‘green politics’ is more than just the Green Party. Burnham’s recent re-commitment to water reform and grid connectivity have created a new possibility that environmentally conscious voters will turn towards Labour.
If that happens, it could create two different futures for environmental politics in the UK. The first option is that growing environmental support for Labour exerts soft influence on the Prime Minister and the Government: positive feedback that shows that they will be rewarded for making pro-environmental choices, which may lead to more movement in that direction.
A second option could be complacency. If the Green Party was right about its intended plans, then the failure to secure a by-election victory might make any electoral threat from the Greens look like a lower priority for the current Government. That could reduce pressure on the Government to prioritise dealing with environmental challenges, particularly if its attention turns to holding off its other political rivals.
There’s also a third future on the horizon. For a while now, it has seemed like the environment has had a relatively quiet voice in the political arena, coming mostly from outside of government. The third option is a continuation of that trend, as decisions about the environment continue to be seen as lesser considerations amongst a policy agenda dominated by other issues that remain present in the media.
Predicting which trend will triumph is as difficult as ever. Regardless of what happens, the IES will continue to provide the latest insights and analysis, keeping our Members informed and speaking up for the voice of science, scientists, and the natural world in the conversations that matter (even if politics won't do it for us)!
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- Read more about the latest political shifts in our analysis on the new PM's Cabinet and what it means for water reform.
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- Find out more by reading the latest articles from Essential Environment, including insights on how vision and worldviews affect outcomes and our analysis on what the upcoming COP31 climate summit will mean for environmental experts.
If you want to learn more about environmental policy or the training we offer for members, please contact Joseph Lewis, Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org).
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