Was 2021 a good year for the environment?

Calendar for 2021, overlaid with green question mark.

New writing… My latest piece for The Hub — the award-winning content platform curated by Mitsubishi Electric — looks back on the last 12 months and what they might mean for sustainability. As the UK economy stumbled forward out of the gloom of lockdown in search of a return to growth, 2021 proved another pretty bad year for many things we previously took for granted, such as traveling, working, socialising and schooling. Given the rise of the climate agenda, however, was it still a good year for the environment?

From the flurry of policy announcements in the run-up to COP26, to the emergence of climate finance and growth of investment in renewables, 2021 saw promises made and records broken. The environment never seemed far from the front page, with public awareness and activism on the rise, plus business increasingly in the spotlight, for the wrong reasons, as well as the right. So, what progress (if any) have we made towards a greener and fairer future?

From Net Zero ambition, to green job creation, you can read the review in full, on The Hub:

The environment in 2021 — a work in progress.


To view a back-catalogue of articles authored by Jim McClelland for ‘The Hub’, please see archive here.



SUSTMEME: Get the Susty Story Straight!