Common Cause: the Green Standard manifesto on climate change and the natural environment has been launched. Read it here along with the accompanying press release.

Our 2009 Green Standard report is a forward-looking assessment of the priorities for action on climate change and the natural environment in the next Parliament from the UK’s eight leading environment groups.

Action in the next Parliament is critical if we are to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, tackle the looming crises of food, energy and water shortages, and improve the resilience of our natural environment.

The current mismatch between the scale of the problem and the solutions offered risks catastrophic failure at a time of historic responsibility.  To succeed, urgent action is needed now – not in the decades to come.

Common Cause argues it is therefore imperative that the leaders of all parties in the next Parliament accord the highest priority to climate change and the natural environment. Only with this concord on the seriousness of the challenge and the opportunities that
await, will we secure the necessary action across government.

The environment groups behind the report call on all political parties to demonstrate their willingness to acknowledge and embrace these challenges, and their preparedness to play a leadership role by endorsing a Common Cause Declaration.  The declaration sets the threshold for credibility at the next election and is a necessary starting point if real progress is to be made.  We also call on the parties to commit to ten specific manifesto proposals that we believe must form the basis of action for the next government.

These manifesto commitments relate directly to the original Green Standard tests for environmental leadership we launched in 2007.