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How do the manifestos measure up on climate and nature?

Updated: Sep 26


We’ve taken a look at the available analysis to see how the General Election manifestos measure up on climate and nature.


What are the scores? Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace analysis

Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have joined forces to rank the 2024 election manifestos of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party against 40 key policies ahead of polling day on 4 July. They summarise;


‘After scrutinising the details, Labour scores 4-times higher than the Conservatives, but it’s the Greens and Liberal Democrats that claim first and second place respectively. The Green Party leads the pack with a whopping 39 out of a possible 40 points, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 31.5. Between Labour and the Conservatives there’s no contest: Labour scored a respectable but not exceptional 20.5, while the Conservatives are miles off in last place with a shocking 5 points’.


Read all the details here.


What are the emissions savings from each manifesto?

This week Vote Climate also published their analysis and came to similar conclusions. They searched the party manifestos to identify policy pledges that would have an impact on the UK's climate emissions and estimated emissions saved if these pledges were implemented. As you’d expect the Green Party came out by far the best, but there were also some big differences between other parties, with the Conservatives pledges showing very little impact by 2050.


This graph from their website shows their findings;

Source: Vote Climate

They acknowledge that their analysis is ’still work in progress and inevitably contains some errors’ but that ‘on the other hand, it seems unlikely, given the huge differences between them, that revisions will change where each main party stands in the rankings'. Find out more here.


How do the manifestos present the issues?

As well as the actual pledges and policy commitments made, words matter, and there are some significant differences between how the parties present the issues. This Guardian article includes a look at these language differences, with the Conservatives highlighting the costs of tackling climate change whilst the Labour manifesto recognises that the ‘the climate and nature crisis is the greatest long-term global challenge that we face’. Perspectives are given from four environmental experts.


Find out more

The following are also good summaries of where the parties stand;


BBC summary of campaign promises with category for environment

 

Party Manifestos are here;


Reform UK have a ‘contract’ instead of a manifesto which can be found here. Other smaller parties manifestos are available on their websites.

 

Find out more about where the candidates stand in your constituency here.





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