SAVING wildlife, reducing household emissions and creating new green spaces should form the bedrock of British political parties’ manifestos, campaign groups urged yesterday.

Pressure groups the National Trust, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF, the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts have joined forces to launch the Greener Britain campaign. They urged the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem leaders to commit to a series of green pledges they say will start to turn the tide on environmental disaster by 2020.

They have called for the creation of new marine protected areas around the UK, as well as in its overseas’ territories, the Arctic and Antarctic. A 25-year plan for boosting wildlife and green spaces and a major scheme to improve household energy efficiency are also on the cards.

Further pledges include tackling the “resource shock” of increasingly limited resources.

The groups have a combined supporter base of over seven million.

Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven said: “The next government will have the chance to help forge a critical international deal on climate change, support the creation of a global sanctuary in the Arctic and protect huge areas of the world’s Southern Ocean around our overseas territories.

“The question is whether it will have the courage to face up to vested interests and the vision to make it happen.”

Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has come under fire for insufficient flood defence spending, the proposed privatisation of Britain’s forests and his ministers’ and backbenchers’ climate change scepticism. On taking office in 2010, he pledged “the greenest government ever.”