A new report by the leading thinktank Policy Exchange today reveals that despite promising to “put concern for the environment at the heart of policy-making” the Government looks likely to miss over half of the green targets it has set since 1997.

Out of 138 high level targets surveyed, 60% of targets have been missed, are unlikely to be achieved, or are worded so vaguely as to make meaningful analysis impossible. Two-thirds of the key climate change targets appear unlikely to be met while a massive 88% targets for biodiversity have been missed. Other areas where policy appears to be failing are rural affairs (only 31% met), transport (17% met) and water (17% met). The sole area where a majority of targets are on course to be achieved is waste.

The head of Policy Exchange’s environment unit, Tara Singh, examined 132 White Papers, speeches and publications since 1997 for high-level targets set by central Government which it is responsible for delivering.

The report criticises the UK culture of target setting. Targets are set without the policy drivers, notably finance and interim benchmarking, required to meet them. Targets are chopped and changed, confusing industry when certainty is needed, for example the Government’s continually dithering between nuclear and renewables. Many targets are so vague or so long-term as to be all but meaningless while others are the responsibility of so many departments and agencies that no-one feels responsible for policy delivery.

The report’s authors found furthermore that far from being an honest motivator of achievement where failures are acknowledged and lessons learnt, a pattern of “creative accounting” has emerged where targets are in danger of being failed. One example is the original target to reduce carbon by 60% by 2050. This target, set by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, implicitly included aviation. When the target was adopted by the Government, aviation was explicitly excluded.

As Tara Singh put it: “The atmosphere does not care about accounting tricks: it cares about the amount of carbon in the air. Trying to take some of the UK’s carbon emissions off our carbon balance sheet is fundamentally dishonest—and potentially very dangerous in the fight to tackle climate change. As time passes and targets are missed, the Government finds it politically convenient to set increasingly nebulous objectives. In 2006 a target was set for “all new homes to be zero carbon within a decade” but in the first month of 2008, just 3 zero carbon homes were built.”

As targets have been missed, the authors identify a disturbing new trend that has emerged: targets being used not as a measure of action, but in lieu of it. New targets are either so vague as to be meaningless or so aspirational as to be unrealistic. Meanwhile, old targets have been cunningly reformulated so that the public does not realise these targets have been failed.

The report finds that the Government also increasingly ‘spins’ targets and uses carbon dioxide emissions as an example. In the 1999 Pre-Budget Report the Government said it was going to: “reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2010.” In 2003 this became an aspiration to “move towards a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2010”. In 2005: “UK carbon dioxide emissions will be about 14 per cent below the 1990 level, and emissions of all greenhouse gases will be around 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.”

Tara Singh explains: “The Government has a commitment to cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2010. It also has a separate commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to cut all Greenhouse Gases by 12.5% by 2012. This Government deliberately conflates the two in order to confuse the public into thinking the 20 per cent carbon goal is still well on track. Now the Government talks only of the much looser Kyoto Target.”

The report concludes that targets are often set in the absence of a strong policy commitment to turn plans into action. The sheer number and complexity of targets also makes them easy to forget or miss and hence they lose much of their motivating force.

Tara Singh again: “There are too many, too complex targets without specific and attainable goals, set far in advance but measured continually. There also needs to be a more open and transparent approach to reporting. Our environment does not benefit just because a target is set, only when it is ambitious and is subsequently achieved.”

Also go to www.policyexchange.org.uk