During the 2024 General Election, someone asked me for the best thing the Conservative government had done. I said transition planning. Or at least putting the wheels for transition planning in motion. It’s also one of the reasons I knew I’d joined the right party in the Liberal Democrats soon after becoming a member in early 2019. It was in our 2019 manifesto. It’s firmly in the 2025 climate paper passed at Autumn Conference just passed.

Transition planning is the single most important piece of regulation missing to tackle the climate and broader sustainability emergency. It’s now back up for debate in the UK, a consultation having recently closed, four years after the previous government set up the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) at COP26, the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow.

The Liberal Democrats have to be loud champions of transition planning

For our credibility on climate, our relationships with experts and activist groups, and our ability to attract and retain members as the most progressive party on climate and the whole sustainability spectrum.

The climate and sustainability emergency is a massive systems problem

It cuts deeply across the environment, society, and an economy that must move away from a sole focus on GDP and growth without any consideration of how those measures work for people and the planet. We need the biggest firms and financial organizations to publicly disclose their plans to help address that emergency.

From these disclosed transition plans, we need those large organizations to collaborate throughout their systems to bring everyone along. That collaboration must include their suppliers and companies they invest in, as well as customers, whether the public or other businesses, and policymaking.

uppose we reach a ‘critical mass’ of these major organizations disclosing their transition plans and bringing their stakeholders along. In that case, we will be in a place to align policy, consumer behaviour, and industry with the trajectories we need to eliminate UK and global emissions—and address all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including poverty, equality, nature, and water.

The EU might have dropped transition planning from its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) regulations in its ‘Omnibus’ streamlining package, and the US is unlikely to take the lead anytime soon (although New York and California might have something to say about it). Countries like Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia have versions of transition planning law. Switzerland and Canada are mulling things over. But should the UK illustrate that transition planning is the direction regulation will eventually reach—whatever the global timeframe—then more and more large businesses and financial institutions will build and disclose plans and have to work with their supply chains and networks to implement them.

We have the goals for sustainability. We know where we are now. We just need to join the dots with transition plans and put them into action. Plans that ensure a just transition that leaves no one behind. In partnership with government at all levels, we need the most influential organizations to lead.

The UK could have a huge systemic impact on sustainability from a single policy

The government recently tried to move Ed Miliband, its loudest climate champion, from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). He held firm. But the government could all too easily remove its commitment to transition planning under the banner of “slashing red tape” and its growth above all else mission.

The Liberal Democrats must therefore champion transition planning at all levels of government.

The Liberal Democrats must be the party that pushes for radical systemic change with policy that can make it happen.

* Josh works on climate and sustainability across research, consulting, convening, and advocacy, focusing on the systems change and economics we need. He is the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor of Lewisham and Catford South. Josh is also a member of the Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee (FPC). He is a former PPC and Cambridge City Councillor with the opposition portfolio for Climate, Environment, and the City Centre.