The EIP: 10 Days of the 10 Goals - Goal 7: Climate change

Introduction

Goal 7 (Climate Change) promises to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions to accelerate to net zero and work to prepare the natural environment for the effects of climate change,” in alignment with the obligations on Government under the Climate Change Act 2008.

Its headline actions include restoring approximately 280,000 hectares of peatland by 2050, supporting methane‑suppressing animal feed from 2025, scaling agroforestry and climate‑resilient forestry species, and aligning rapid grid and clean generation deployment through a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan and an Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement package with a new Marine Recovery Fund. Monitoring is through the EIP’s Environmental Indicator Framework and the existing carbon budget and NAP reporting cycles.

I set out below what Goal 7 does, what it doesn’t, and whether what it does, it does well – on both mitigation and adaptation. There is plenty to chew over; with luck, this post will do some of the mental washing‑up for you before Christmas. And if your thoughts still need tidying – particularly on the fast‑moving TMO4+ grid reforms that Goal 7 nods to – Natasha Jackson, Richard Turney KC, Jenny Wigley KC and I have recorded a webinar and published a short update explaining the changes and likely pinch‑points, with regular updates to follow in the new year. Consider it an early present.

Goal 7 and Climate Mitigation

On mitigation, Goal 7 prioritises preserving and enhancing natural sinks through the Land Use Framework (which the EIP promises will be published soon – definitely one to watch!), decarbonising agriculture, including by supporting methane reductions, supporting the Clean Power 2030 Plan, enabling societal shifts towards sustainable practices and enabling business to contribute towards achieving net zero. Quite a lot of ambition, with perhaps less clarity as to how it might be achieved…

Three things struck me of the plan’s mitigation promises. But before that, a quick general note on international developments that post-dated the last EIP and Carbon Budget plan and preceded this one. The International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion on climate change (which Odette Chalaby and I were involved in) has reframed the legal baseline in ways that are likely to colour domestic review of carbon budgeting. The ICJ confirmed a stringent due diligence duty to prevent significant harm to the climate system, grounded in the best available science and adjusted by capabilities. It interpreted Article 4 of the Paris Agreement as requiring parties to act with due diligence and to undertake their best efforts to achieve the content of their nationally determined contributions, supported by appropriate domestic measures that regulate both public and private emissions.

These findings dovetail with the trajectory of UK litigation under Part 1 of the Climate Change Act, which already requires realistic delivery risk assessment and transparency. They also speak to potential future challenges about the meaning of “best efforts” in practice. As my colleague Charles Bishop suggested during our ICJ event earlier this year, the ICJ was clear that states have obligations to undertake best efforts, reflective of their common but differentiated responsibilities, to achieve the content of their NDCs. However, the Court gave little guidance as to what these “best efforts” look like, and so strategic litigants may wish to clarify this ambiguity via domestic claims pushing for more ambitious action (e.g., in respect of reliance on removals, which I discuss below).

Now back to my three thoughts on the EIP’s treatment of climate mitigation.

First, notably absent is any commitment to phase out fossil fuels. Goal 7 says absolutely nothing about fossil fuel phase‑out. That omission sits uneasily with recent case law and with the ICJ’s recent opinion. In Finch, the Supreme Court held that downstream combustion emissions from an oil project are an “inevitable” effect that must be assessed in environmental impact assessment. The EFTA Court, in litigation brought by Greenpeace Nordic, reached a concordant conclusion for new oil and gas fields, rejecting the idea that lifecycle emissions can be deferred or washed out by substitution arguments. The ICJ goes further in principle, indicating that failures to regulate private actors, including licensing and subsidising fossil fuel production and consumption, may constitute internationally wrongful acts.

Read together, these developments point to a clear proposition: authorities must confront the full climate effects of fossil projects ex ante, and governments must maintain coherent frameworks that do not enable expansion incompatible with their preventive duties and targets. The UK’s Climate Compatibility Checkpoint, which has focused on comparative carbon intensity and net‑import status, sits uncomfortably with that standard. Absent a clear policy on phase‑out, including for imported fuels, approvals will remain open to challenge on domestic public law grounds and, increasingly, to arguments that they are inconsistent with the UK’s best‑efforts and due diligence obligations.

Second, the large majority of Goal 7 is focused on carbon removals (via nature-based solutions such as peatland restoration and protection). Although the EIP is distinct from the new Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan (CBGDP), the two must be read together. While there is yet no public legal challenge to the CBGDP, Friends of the Earth, a claimant in past successful challenges to the net zero strategy and carbon budget delivery plan, has put out an assessment of the new CBGDP which welcomes stronger delivery architecture, but flags optimism around new technologies and the large role assigned to greenhouse gas removals. That concern is echoed and sharpened by a recent paper by Rupert Stuart‑Smith and others, which finds widespread ambiguity and overreliance on removals in national strategies, including reliance on uncertain technologies such as BECCS and DACCS, and non‑permanent land‑based sinks. The study warns that non‑delivery increases temperature overshoot and imperils 1.5°C‑consistent pathways, urging states to minimise overshoot and quantify residual emissions and any international removals dependence.

These findings matter for Goal 7 because its land‑use focus sits alongside wider UK assumptions about removals later in the decade (at times, Goal 7 reads as if trees and peat will be the cavalry riding to the rescue, bugles and all). The UK’s BECCS ambitions similarly face biomass sustainability and supply constraints, while land sinks face permanence risks from climate‑driven disturbance, as Stuart-Smith highlights. Against that backdrop, Defra’s annual alignment checks should test whether removals are credibly deliverable and transparently bounded, and whether near‑term gross emissions cuts are being prioritised. If not, the Government’s carbon budgeting remains exposed to further judicial review on familiar Climate Change Act grounds that plans must be realistic on delivery risk and sufficiently transparent for parliamentary and public scrutiny. As mentioned above, a pathway that defers hard emissions cuts into speculative removals is vulnerable not just on delivery, but now also against an international benchmark of stringent due diligence and a clear international obligation to “undertake best efforts” to achieve the content of NDCs.

Third, the absence of any reference to climate-damaging advertising practices in the EIP’s section on “enabling sustainable behaviour” is surprising. Two NGOs I am working with on an OECD complaint against ad giant WPP would probably see this as a glaring gap: I’ve learnt from them that advertising plays a huge role in driving consumer choices,[1] and also that, sadly, ads incentivising harmful consumer behaviours also raise equalities issues (in the UK, areas with the lowest levels of disposable income are home to 82% of outdoor ads, compared with just 18% in more affluent areas[2]).

Goal 7 and Climate Adaptation

On adaptation, Goal 7 responds to the Climate Change Committee’s 2025 warning that progress is off‑track by promising “new measurable and timebound climate resilience objectives and standards” for NAP4, together with clarified planning assumptions, indicators of progress, and risk‑based action on SSSIs. The EIP’s wording on adaptation seems to me to hark back quite obviously to the legal challenge that Friends of the Earth, Doug Paulley and Kevin Jordan brought against NAP3, and which is now waiting to be heard by Strasbourg. Indeed, the EIP promises “new measurable and timebound climate resilience objectives” in NAP4. The absence of such “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound) objectives was one of the Claimants’ core arguments in challenging the legality of NAP3.

The High Court dismissed the challenge to NAP3 in October 2024, holding that section 58 of the Climate Change Act leaves the specificity of adaptation objectives to ministerial discretion and that adaptation likely attracts a wider margin of appreciation than mitigation. Permission to appeal was refused. However, the Claimants have now applied to Strasbourg, where their claim focuses on whether Convention‑compliant adaptation frameworks must adopt specific, measurable objectives capable of alleviating the most severe or imminent impacts, and whether procedural safeguards around NAP3 were adequate. This is the first case I know of that questions whether and how the European Court of Human Rights’ formulation of state positive obligations on climate change in Verein Klima Seniorinnen Schweiz[3] applies to state human rights obligations to adapt to climate change. What our clients argue is that those positive obligations are the same – if not more exacting – in the context of adaptation to climate change, which involves more present and immediate risks to human rights.

The Government clearly did not agree with us…

However, the EIP’s express commitment that NAP4 will include “measurable and timebound” resilience objectives, with clarified assumptions and indicators, reads as a direct answer to our clients’ criticisms and to the Climate Change Committee’s assessment. It signals a pivot from generic aims toward quantified, reviewable objectives capable of monitoring and accountability. Whatever the eventual Strasbourg outcome, NAP4 will likely be judged against that standard in 2028, and the Government’s own formulation strengthens the case that adaptation objectives need to be SMART‑type if rights are to be effectively protected.

Conclusion

Goal 7 is a step forward in integrating climate into environmental security: it locks in the timetable for Carbon Budget 7, promises a NAP4 built on measurable and time‑bound resilience objectives, and couples land‑use mitigation with energy system planning and better data. The above are my highlights (or lowlights). Views from the mitigation and adaptation trenches and from civil society are very welcome. Is the EIP’s climate offer (and the new carbon budget) a stocking-filler or the real present?

Margherita Cornaglia is a barrister at Landmark Chambers.

[1] For instance, Fossil fuel advertising has been shown to create positive cues for fossil fuel products which stimulates demand and normalises consumption. See Clemens Kaupa, “Promoting the apocalypse? The legality of a ban on advertising for fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive products under European Law” (2023) http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn... accessed 12 December 2024, page 12.

[2] The Guardian, Clea Skopeliti, Four in five billboard ads in England and Wales in poorer areas (4 March 2024) https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/04/four-in-five-billboard-ads-in-england-and-wales-in-poorer-areas accessed 16 December 2024.

[3] Watch my colleagues discussing this here, Richard Turney KC’s analysis here and Alex Goodman KC’s analysis of standing here