Pippa Heylings' open letter to Green Party members

Dear Green Party members,

This week world leaders gather in Antalya for COP31. For many of us who have spent our lives fighting for the planet, these summits stir a familiar mix of hope and frustration. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats and as someone who shares that hope, I want to write to you today to say something simple: if nature and climate are why you got into politics, you have a home with us.

I have spent most of my working life on the frontline of the climate and nature crises. I lived for eight years in East Africa and fifteen in Latin America and the Caribbean, in communities where climate change was not a forecast but a daily reality: coral reefs bleaching, water running short, the Amazon burning, whole communities pushed to the brink. Since 2010, I have worked with three UN processes, on climate, nature and desertification, alongside negotiators from the Global South fighting for climate justice. I have seen firsthand how, collectively through the Paris Agreement, a four degrees warming was averted.

At COP26 in Glasgow, I spoke to world leaders on behalf of local councils and helped secure greater local powers for climate action. In 2024, I went to the nature COP in Cali and the climate COP in Baku as an MP, and presented our Climate and Nature Bill to delegates from around the world. I have seen what these summits can achieve when countries show leadership, and what is lost when they don't.

That is why I am worried about the direction of British politics. Reform and the Conservatives have both vowed to scrap net zero and the Climate Change Act, ripping up a consensus that once united our country. Meanwhile, too often Labour are yielding ground on our environmental targets as they chase Reform votes, even after a summer of five heatwaves and the worst drought in decades. Now an unprecedented super El Niño threatens to bring more intense storms and flooding this winter: a double blow for communities already reeling from the record-breaking Summer. Yet, whilst COP31 is in progress, Labour has cut funding for heat pump subsidies, may be rolling back EV targets and has said it is considering approving Rosebank oil field. When Ed Davey and I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to bring party leaders together to protect Britain from extreme weather, and to agree how we stop it getting worse, we were met with silence. 

And I know many of you are asking hard questions about your own party. You joined the Greens to protect our rivers, our wildlife and our countryside. Many of you now feel that nature has slipped down its list of priorities. You are not alone, and you are not wrong to want a party that puts it first.

The Liberal Democrats will always put climate and nature first. Here is what we stand for:

• Every new home built green: Our Sunshine Bill means developers will have to fit new-builds with solar panels and heat pumps, cutting bills and emissions together.
• Climate and nature, side by side in law: We keep fighting to enshrine protections for climate and nature in law so that halting nature's decline carries the same legal weight as net zero.
• Clean rivers and seas: We led the campaign to scrap Ofwat. Now we are fighting for a regulator with real teeth, water companies run for the public benefit rather than shareholders, and an end to sewage dumping for good.
• Farmers as partners for nature: with a £1 billion uplift to funding for nature-friendly farming schemes, support for regenerative farming, and a national "call to store" programme to help farms withstand drought and flood. We'll work with farmers, not dictate to them.
• A Britain ready for the climate we already have: with a cross-party national plan for heatwaves, drought and flooding.

We are not perfect, and we won't always agree on everything. But on the things that matter most to the future of our planet, I believe we share far more than divides us.

This fortnight, as the world looks to Antalya, I hope you'll take a look at us. Come to a local meeting, talk to our councillors and campaigners, and see the difference Liberal Democrats are making for nature and local climate action in communities across the country.

The planet can't wait, and neither should we.

Yours sincerely,

Pippa Heylings MP

Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Energy Security and Net Zero

MP for South Cambridgeshire