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The need to understand the scope for comparative lesson-drawing on national-level climate mitigation policy has acquired added significance due to the current impasse in international-level governance. Greater policy learning or lesson-drawing among peers at the national level could, to an extent, foster meaningful developments by overcoming generalised international apathy and inaction. In this respect, we analyse the features of one significant example of national climate policy in order to examine the scope for lesson-drawing, thereby setting out a normative research agenda. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 remains one of the few examples of legally enshrined national mitigation legislation and hence provides a relevant, but surprisingly under-researched, source of learning for policy-makers worldwide. By analysing its development, critical features and implementation, this article shows that-despite criticism of the sustainability and implementation effectiveness of the Act-some aspects of the policy could provide lessons for other states, and hence are potentially transferable extraterritorially, although lesson-drawing itself is conditional on contextual constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic congestion in Britain’s towns and cities grew with the exponential rise of car ownership in the 1950s and 1960s. The Buchanan Report, Traffic in Towns (1963), was a pioneering response to this problem, advancing a series of radical solutions for how cities could be adapted to mass car ownership. This article examines the contemporary debate about traffic among planners and politicians in the 1960s and considers both short-term responses to the Buchanan Report and its longer term effects in cities such as Leeds and Leicester. The legacy of Buchanan was ambivalent: while many of its prescriptions favoured a new, environmentally sensitive approach to the historic fabric and urban living, the report’s arguments for radical reconstruction pointed to the building of urban motorways. Paradoxically, the growth of environmental awareness in 1960s Britain was linked to the endeavour to modernize the nation’s towns and cities and to create the conditions for a car-owning society [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern conventional farming provides Western Europe and North America with reliable, high quality, and relatively cheap supplies of food and fiber, increasingly viewed as a potential source of fuel. One of the costs is continued widespread pollution of rivers and groundwater—predominantly by nutrients. In 1970, in both the United States and UK, farming was focused on maximizing yield and management practices were rapidly modernizing. Little attention was paid to the external impacts of farming. In 2010, diffuse pollution from agriculture is being seriously addressed by both voluntary and statutory means in an attempt to balance environmental costs with the continued benefits of agricultural production. In this paper we consider long-term changes in the concentration and flux of nitrate in five rural UK rivers to demonstrate the impact of agricultural intensification and subsequent policies to reduce diffuse pollution on river water quality between 1970 and 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addresses various environmental issues in Great Britain. Problems concerning the limited scope of environmental considerations in the policy of the British government; Information on the top three recycling rates in Europe; Status of the implementation of Local Agenda 21 projects in Great Britain.

The article focuses on the plan of the British government to terminate or unite its scientific advisory and regulatory bodies. It says that the abolishment of Great Britain regulatory bodies could compromise independent scientific guidance. It says that Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) has provided independent advice since 1970 but will be abolished in March 2011. According to Susan Owens, RCEP has tremendous contribution in the development of environmental policy.