Brexit... A Lifetime of Purgatory for the UK’s Environmental Laws - Or is there a Stairway to Heaven?

Abstract

This paper considers the prospect that the United Kingdom’s decision to withdraw from the European Union may have a detrimental effect on its environmental protections. Brexit may provide the opportunity to pursue a more environmentally focused agenda, but it is argued that the UK’s plan to transpose EU legislation underestimates the complexity of the task and that the UK lacks the resources to replicate the system it currently enjoys. On this basis it is thought that a reordering of environmental law is more likely than a radical re writing of it.