Corporate Partnerships Article - Policy and Practice Update

It’s been a busy first quarter for IEMA’s Policy and Practice team, with multiple policy and practice activities having already been delivered.

On the policy front – our advocacy work aimed at influencing policymaking within government and with its arm’s length bodies – we’ve made a number of consultation submissions. These have included a submission to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) consultation on plastics and a response to the Office for Environmental Protection’s consultation on its Strategy and Enforcement Policy. We’ve also engaged with the Environmental Audit Committee on its inquiry focused on aligning economic goals with better outcomes for the natural environment.

We work with IEMA members to develop responses to these sorts of consultations through things like workshops and roundtables. If you would be interested in participating in future evidence gathering sessions do let us know. We’ll be reaching out to members over the next few weeks for their insights on Defra’s consultations on long-term environment targets and nature recovery.

We’ve also delivered several practice activities – those geared towards helping members understand how the changing policy and regulatory landscape impacts them – over the last few months. These have included the launch of two new impact assessment guides in the areas of soils and GHG emissions, respectively.

In a similar way to how we deliver our policy activities, we also work with many IEMA members and other expert stakeholders to produce guidance documents. From our development pipeline we are looking at bringing forward guidance documents on climate change adaptation and also on approaches to identifying and managing scope 3 emissions. Again, do let us know if you have a perspective to share.

The Policy and Practice team also put on an annual programme of webinars across its thematic streams. As a reminder these streams are:

• Climate change and energy
• Circular economy
• Impact assessment
• Global environmental and social assessment

If you have an idea for a webinar in one of these streams or would like to be considered as a speaker, we would love to hear from you at [email protected]

Finally, Defra and Natural England are bringing together partners, legislation and funding to create a national network of wildlife-rich places – the Nature Recovery Network (NRN). The NRN aims to increase, expand, improve and connect these places across our towns, cities and countryside, and coast. It is a major commitment in the UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan and enacted by the Environment Act 2021.

Partnership working is essential to deliver the objectives of the NRN, working together across a broad range of organisations and sectors to share skills, knowledge and resources. Bringing the private sector into the NRN Delivery Partnership is essential to ensure coordinated delivery and action, as well as helping to close the funding gap to successfully deliver the NRN.

We would therefore like to ask to complete this short Business Survey which is intended to help refine the scope and objectives of future NRN business engagement. We are seeking your views on important issues for the development of the NRN and your participation could potentially make a significant contribution to delivering the national network.

Please complete this survey no later than 29th April 2022. Your views will help the planning of future NRN engagement events this year. If you have any questions on the purpose of this survey, or on the survey itself, please contact Jon Moore (Business and Nature Recovery Lead) at [email protected]

Ben Goodwin

Director of Policy and Public Affairs, IEMA, IEMA

Ben is Director of Policy and Public Affairs at IEMA. In this capacity he looks after the delivery of IEMAs core policy, practice and public affairs activities across a range of environmental and sustainability issues. Prior to joining the organisation Ben worked in several similar policy roles at organisations including the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Renewable Energy Association.