Environment Manifesto: Protecting Our Local Environment

It is vital that we cherish our city - its parks, suburbs, streets and town centres - and strive to make it cleaner and greener.

Our local environment has a major impact on our wellbeing and even on our safety. If public spaces suffer from graffiti, fly-tipping and symptoms of neglect, it sends a message to the community that the spaces we share have little value, leading to diminished communities and higher levels of crime.

Areas that have pleasant, clean, open spaces are less likely to suffer from crime. That is why I will make the improvement of our local open spaces a top priority on the environmental agenda.

While the current Labour Mayor and his officials have spent time and taxpayers' money jetting around the world attending climate change conferences, key aspects of our local environment have been neglected.

I will improve our local environment by providing £6million to make our open spaces cleaner and safer. I will fund the planting of 10,000 street trees to improve the residential streets that need them most, and will amend the London Plan to protect domestic gardens from being lost to new developments.

I will also take action to make London the greenest city in the world. The Mayor's status affords the opportunity to set a positive example of environmentally-friendly practice to organisations and residents across the capital. I will use the position to procure greener and cleaner goods and services for Londoners, and will work with the boroughs to negotiate the best deals from environmentally-friendly suppliers.

It seems strange that while the current Mayor evangelises about energy efficiency, the lights at City Hall are left to burn all night. I want City Hall and the bodies of the GLA to have a clean carbon conscience under my Mayoralty.

This will be achieved with a mixture of the latest technology and simple common sense: motion sensors instead of night-long lighting; filtered tap water instead of environmentally-damaging bottled water; travelling to UK conferences by train rather than carbon-chugging aeroplane.

Above all I will work to make London a pleasant and safe place to live, by nurturing and protecting the public spaces that bind us all together.

My Pledges

I will:

1. Protect And Preserve Open Spaces

• Use the Mayor's powers to protect the green belt and protect against development on gardens.
• Invest £6 million in making our open spaces cleaner and safer.
• Invest in 10,000 street trees to improve the local neighbourhoods that need them most.

2. Make It Easier To Recycle And Reduce Waste

• Promote innovative new schemes that pay Londoners to recycle.
• Work closely with boroughs to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill, and support a ban on plastic bags.

3. Make Transport More Sustainable

• Oppose the third runway at Heathrow and mixed mode operation.
• Promote hybrid buses and get traffic moving more smoothly to reduce congestion and so reduce emissions.
• Make London a genuinely cycle-friendly city to promote modal shift.

4. Help Tackle Climate Change

• Work to help cut London's carbon emissions by 60% from their 1990 levels by 2025, through promoting greater energy efficiency and cutting
  congestion.
• Work with the boroughs to encourage Londoners to install insulation in return for Council Tax rebates.
• Champion innovation through an annual Mayor's prize of £20,000 for the best new ideas for low carbon technology from London's students.

Click here to download the Environment Manifesto (PDF)

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