Global Population Growth

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con) [V]]

My Lords, at COP 26 we will seek to address the steps needed to reduce emissions in line with the Paris agreement. The UK presidency will focus on five campaigns in the areas of energy, transport, nature, finance and adaptation and resilience. Population growth is not an explicit focus for the COP. At the Climate Ambition Summit in December, the COP 26 president-designate set out four strategic aims for COP 26: a step change in mitigation; a strengthening of adaptation; getting finance flowing; and enhancing international collaboration.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

Did the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, have a supplementary question? No.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Government not recognise that the pressures of increasing global population lead to cut and burn of vegetation and a number of other pressures, including, of course, drought and conflict? The question is what the Government are going to do about it. If they fail to raise it at COP, will they do something more and raise it, for example, at the UN Security Council? Will they encourage by their development policies family spacing, which is very much a women’s issue and could lead to a more acceptable population movement globally?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

My Lords, COP 26 is just one staging post this year. It is a significant and major event, but we also have the Convention on Biological Diversity, we are presidents of the G7 and we will have the G20 as well. We have a number of events hosted, for example, by the new US President to raise these issues up the agenda. We will be using all these events to do all that we can to push for a coherent approach to tackling climate change and nature destruction. That of course includes increasing support for initiatives around family planning and the education of women and girls.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, although the screen has become a little eccentric in its recording of that. We come now to the second Oral Question.