To date
Reports. This include the publication of policy reports: first, A greener, more pleasant land, which focused on reforming rural payments to farmers based on ecosystem services rather than acreage. This has been highly influential on the UK Government as outlined earlier. Second, Saving global nature, set out the argument for greening the UK’s Overseas Development Assistance and stimulated wide debate over how our aid budget is spent. Third, Global green giant? put forward a series of policy recommendations to address declining biodiversity and make Britain a global leader on conservation. We also compiled an essay collection with 21 entries, entitled Conservation nation, which contains contributions on conservation threats and proposed solutions from academics, scientists, politicians, farmers and representatives of influential NGOs. In 2020, we also released the Delivering net zero essay collection which highlighted policies and projects across different sectors that could support delivering net zero. Following that, we released a report, Going greener?, that analysed public perceptions around decarbonisation. This was followed in 2021 by Nature positive?, which examined public attitudes towards the natural environment, and Green money, which outlined policies to reform UK carbon pricing. 2022 saw two reports on energy and the environment. The first, an essay collection, Fast track?, had many big names examining the dimensions of climate security, migration and innovation. Then, Greening UK export finance investigated and offered recommendations to align UKEF with the Paris Agreement. Moving in to 2023, the start of the year saw the release of Greater and greener homes, which sought ways to increase housing supply and make development more sustainable. Soon, Bright Blue will also release a report on delivering air pollution solutions in a socially just way.
Polling reports. Ahead of the 2017 Conservative Party Conference, Bright Blue commissioned and analysed original polling showing the importance of Government communication and action on the environment and climate change to younger voters, which was covered extensively by the national media. In addition, we conducted and analysed polling of Conservative Party voters to understand their attitudes in detail towards energy and environmental policy. This report, entitled Green conservatives?, found that Conservative voters want to strengthen or at the very least maintain current main EU-derived environmental regulations. This led us to conclude that the UK should pursue a “Green Brexit”, terminology that was then adopted by the current Government.
Establishment of an advisory board. Our high-level advisory board was launched in 2017 and has now met three times. The advisory board has been critical in shaping the themes and ideas for our various activities through providing expert advice that feeds directly into our projects.
Policy roundtables and events. We have delivered an extensive programme of roundtables and events, including a major all-day conference on Green conservatism in late 2017.
Working groups. We established four working groups to examine conservation in rural, urban, marine and international contexts. To date, the groups have met 12 times, and their output informed the publication of our recent report, Global green giant?.
Call for written evidence. We conducted a call for written evidence that closed in early 2019. We received 14 submissions from groups including the National Trust, the RSPB and the Wildlife and Countryside Link. All the evidence we received informed the development of policy recommendations our report, Global green giant?.