August 13th, 2026
The cost of inaction: We’re already paying the price for environmental decline
by Robin Pierro, ELF CEO
There is a tendency to talk about environmental protection as though it comes at a cost.
If we protect nature, we can’t build enough homes. If we strengthen environmental regulation, we hold back business. If we require developers to mitigate environmental harm, we make infrastructure more expensive. If we move away from fossil fuels too quickly, we undermine growth.
Again and again, protecting the environment is positioned as something we must balance against economic prosperity – a constraint on growth rather than one of its foundations.
But what is it costing us not to protect it?
This summer is providing a fairly stark answer.
Drought has gripped large parts of the country. Reservoirs and rivers are running dangerously low. Wildfires have torn across the country. Farmers are facing punishing conditions for crops and livestock.
And the consequences extend far beyond the environment. When crops fail, food becomes more expensive. When water becomes scarce, businesses and public services come under pressure. When extreme temperatures make it harder to work, productivity falls. Analysis by Verdant Thinking estimates that the UK’s June heatwave alone cost the economy at least £2.4 billion.
The costs ripple through our economy and our everyday lives: higher food prices and insurance premiums, lost working hours, damaged homes, pressure on the NHS, disrupted businesses, infrastructure repairs and higher public spending.
Ultimately, we all pay.
For too long, we have treated environmental protection as a cost to the economy. But environmental decline is already costing us. And there is a simple reason why: our economy depends on a healthy environment.
The Government itself has recognised the scale of that dependence. Earlier this year, its Nature Security Assessment concluded that biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose risks to the UK’s national security, prosperity and resilience.
That should fundamentally change the way we think about environmental protection.
The environment is the essential infrastructure on which our economy and our everyday lives depend. Healthy soils are part of our food security. Rivers and wetlands store and regulate water and help protect communities from flooding. Trees, woodlands and green spaces cool our towns and cities, absorb rainfall and help protect us from increasingly extreme heat.
Environmental protection and economic policy cannot continue to be treated as competing agendas. Protecting and restoring nature is not something we can afford to do once we have achieved economic growth. It is part of how we secure that growth in the first place.
That means investing now in resilience: restoring rivers, woodlands, wetlands and soils; accelerating the transition to clean energy; and properly funding and enforcing the laws designed to prevent environmental harm in the first place.
This isn’t about choosing the environment over the economy. We cannot have an economy without the environment.
And as the costs of environmental decline continue to mount, the question is no longer whether we can afford to act. It is whether we can afford not to.