Environment weekly highlights—15 February 2024

Article summary

This week's edition of Environment weekly highlights includes: News Analysis on updates to the Better Buildings Partnership Green Lease Toolkit and the Loan Market Association Guidance for Green, Social, and Sustainability-Linked Loans External Reviews. In addition, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced bonus restrictions for water bosses where a company has committed serious criminal breaches, and announced a consultation to gather views on draft definitions and principles updating guidance for Marine Protected Area (MPA) assessments, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has confirmed that the number of companies and financial institutions setting greenhouse gas targets has doubled in one year, and guidance has been published on the biodiversity net gain provisions governing planning permissions granted under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Further, the Council of the EU and European Parliament have provisionally agreed to a two-year delay of the adoption of European sustainability reporting standards (ESRS) for third-country companies, SMEs and certain specific sectors, and the European Parliament has...