After six years cleaning up England’s environment, the Environment Agency’s outgoing chair is in no mood for surrender

TOO often, we portray climate change and its consequences as a nightmare. But people don’t like listening to nightmares. They don’t want to believe in nightmares; they want to believe in hope. They want to believe in something different, something better. We need to articulate the debates and discussion around climate change in that context.

Policy-makers don’t make the environment and climate change real for people, mattering to their everyday lives and their everyday experience. We are too generalist in the way in which we talk about it. Mention the environment or climate change, and people’s eyes tend to glaze over.

But talk to them about their own little patch of environment – about the river at the bottom of their village, or the landscape that surrounds where they live, or the urban streetscape and the way in which it is fashioned – and they become really passionate. They are committed to it. They worry about it. They hope for it. They know what they want to change.

Can we link that passion for the local environment with the general principles that surround its management? The public are concerned. They are keen to see progress, and politicians would be mistaken to think that the public don’t care. I believe that while voters don’t see the environment as an overt national priority, they do see it as an underlying sine qua non – something that has to be looked after, that has to underpin everything else.

So there is hope in this field; it’s not just about going to hell in a handcart. The environment in the UK has been improving over the last 10 or 15 years – I’m thinking about air and water quality and looking after our land. Part of that is down to the hard work of the Environment Agency. Look at the major successes: the dramatic reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions; reductions in nitrogen oxide levels; reduction in the discharge of pollutants to rivers; and improved water quality, which has seen fish return to rivers from the Thames to the Mersey. There are otters in every county in England, which couldn’t have been said a few years ago.

So we have made cleaner, better places here in the UK, and we have done that through a mixture of action, hard work, regulation and by bringing pressure to bear on polluters. That’s a success story; it’s something that can be done. Beyond that, there’s a huge economic opportunity in environmental improvement and tackling climate change, by saving money on existing processes and products. In addition, there are new products and services to be brought to market.

And it can be done around the world. Look at the amount China is investing in renewable energy such as wind power. It is doing so because it is concerned about its environment: the air quality in its cities, the water it is dependent on from the melting glaciers of the Himalayas. We have seen progress in the US, too, under Barack Obama. Even in Russia, a majority of business leaders are saying that they feel they need to take climate change seriously. So there is scope out there for alliances, for getting countries around the world to agree and do things together.

At the personal level, there’s a temptation to think, “What can I as an individual do? If I recycle a bit more, if I make some energy efficiency, if I travel less, if I try to generate less carbon – what is the use of that when China is building another coal-fired power station next week?” But that way lies disaster. If we all thought more positively – “Yes, we can each do a tiny bit” – then it adds up.

Over the past 20 years, for example, householders in Germany have embraced renewable energy initiatives, adding them to their properties: there are solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. This was helped by feed-in tariffs, of course, but there was also a real surge in individual effort to embrace renewable energy. That has made a big difference to Germany’s carbon footprint – all thanks to millions of individuals doing their own thing.

Individual action doesn’t just make people think about themselves, but it reminds them why all of this is important. And that in itself is a good thing.

To watch Chris Smith’s speech in full, including his 12-point plan for policy-makers, visit bit.ly/RSAenviro. Read more on sustainable living in our in-depth article “We can build a sustainable world – if you want it”