Guidance

Climate change and environmental sustainability: MOJ

How the Ministry of Justice is embedding sustainability throughout our estate and operations.

From:
Ministry of Justice
Published
25 September 2023

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has the second largest estate and operations across government departments and has many different types of buildings including prisons, probation centres and courts.

In 2022 MOJ and its agencies represented over 20% of government’s carbon emissions, water consumption and waste footprint, and 45% of paper use.  In total, MOJ manages over 4,000 hectares of land and therefore has a responsibility to protect and enhance the natural environment. 

Our challenge is to deliver our justice outcomes while transforming into the climate resilient, decarbonised, resource efficient and nature recovered organisation, required of the future. 

The MOJ climate change and sustainability strategy outlines our greener justice vision, and describes how we will tackle climate change, promote resource efficiency, and help nature recover across our estate and operations.

Our ‘greener justice’ vision is to:

  1. Use sustainability as a strategic enabler of justice outcomes - we will use sustainability activity to promote justice outcomes and support the delivery of government’s climate and environmental goals.

  2. Lead the way in greening government - we will tackle climate change, promote resource efficiency, and protect and enhance nature.

  3. Embed sustainability in everything we do - we will build awareness, increase capability, inspire action and develop the tools to support better decision-making.

Our transition also has the potential to add value far beyond reducing our direct impacts on the environment.  Many prisons promote environmentally focussed jobs and training, providing a recruitment pathway for offenders into the green economy on their release. 

Community Payback activities target environmental work such as tree planting, which provides visible justice and improvements to local communities, whilst also supporting the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan goals.

Through our Court Reform Programme, we are modernising and designing simpler services by introducing digital court and tribunal processes, that are built around the needs of the user. The reforms are improving access to justice and legal services, while reducing the need to travel to courts and reducing paper use.

Corporate documents

MOJ has a number of technical climate and environmental strategies, policies and plans that enable our greener justice vision.

The following documents provide further guidance to our management, employees and supply chain partners.

Technical strategies

Policies and standards

Corporate performance

MOJ’s annual progress and performance on our climate and sustainability transition, and contribution to the greening government commitment targets and United Nations sustainable development goals is reported in the MOJ’s annual report and accounts:

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Published 25 September 2023