Caroline Lucas MP and the Soil Association have both warned of the vulnerability of food and farming to processes of environmental breakdown and highlighted the need for urgent political reform.
Speaking at this year’s Peter Melchett Memorial Lecture Caroline Lucas, twice former Green Party Leader and Brighton Pavilion MP since 2010, called for an urgent re-imagining of politics in the face of the environmental and nature crises.
“Peter Melchett understood that the state of Britain’s politics and the state of our environment were inextricably linked. He knew that you can’t have a good environment without effective politics. That means an end to short-term thinking and far more joined-up government”, Lucas said.
Her speech echoed the Soil Association’s new report calling for: “A reimagining of politics, so it is fit to deliver the transformation that this critical moment demands.”
Lucas said: “Getting food politics right is the political challenge. The Climate Change Committee has played a critical role in driving action on global heating – we now need an equivalent statutory committee, reporting to parliament, to advise the government of the day on what must be done to build the resilience of our food and agriculture system to the shocks to come.”