Pressure from constituents, which had the potential to cause a rebellion in Tory and Lib Dem MPs, has forced the government to accept Labour's amendments on fracking last week.
Protected areas, national parks and sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) are now off limits to fracking, but it is unclear to those in power how big an area of land that will include.
According to Greenpeace, only 3% of the 931 blocks of land licensed for fracking in the UK have no protected areas at all.
A Greenpeace spokesperson said, “Unless ministers can explain why fracking is too risky for the South Downs but perfectly safe in the Lancashire countryside, the next obvious step is to ban this controversial technique from the whole of the UK.”
A proposal for a moratorium on fracking from a group of senior MPs was defeated in the Commons, despite concluding that fracking “isn't in line with the UK's climate change targets”.
It is reported that the future for fracking in the UK looks “bleak”.
