Universal Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

Our thanks are certainly due to the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, for this important debate about integrating sustainable development goals across government departments. I declare my interests as an emeritus professor at UCL and chair of a small environmental consulting company that works in developing countries. I am not sure that as much progress has been made as some of the government rhetoric indicates—so I follow the remarks of previous speakers. More should definitely be done to state and explain these broad goals. This is the first essential for effective policy and more could be done. Having one department in charge—DfID—inevitably biases the process towards the views of that department.

There is no doubt that DfID’s focus on humanitarian and democratic objectives has been effective, in policy and in engaging the public in these aspects of sustainable development. But there has not been the same focus, as the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, also emphasised, on public information, public debate and joined-up policy in the many other areas, such as the environment, economic planning and long-term climate change, agriculture and energy. In the UK, these areas are jointly the responsibility of government departments and civil society—for example, professional, technical and commercial bodies, universities and many other organisations, including charities and donors.

The meteorological agencies around the world are an example of governmental bodies, and I was involved as chief executive of the Met Office. They did then, and do now, play an active role in helping government departments work towards sustainable goals: for example, in advising communities about weather extremes, floods and droughts, all of which are increasing as a result of climate change. But even technical departments of that sort, working with other environmental, medical and health organisations, have to work out how these environmental extremes affect health, the economy and the environment.

However, it has been disappointing to see in the last 10 years or more that in the UK, after 2010 the coalition Government and then the Conservative Government deliberately suppressed some of the integrated policy methods—particularly the one in which the Sure Start programme, which followed America, had been very effective. As I have seen, these were stopped in many villages and elsewhere in the UK. Equally, we had quite an effective system in Britain of regional economic initiatives. These were also immediately suppressed by the Conservatives when the coalition Government came to power. During a recent science committee meeting in the House of Lords, Rolls-Royce commented that, as a result of the demise of these regional economic initiatives, many companies that feed into big companies such as Rolls-Royce were not working so well. There has been partial reinstatement with local enterprise boards, but they are not as effective as what we had before.

International bodies and networks also play a leading role in the United Nations and intergovernmental organisations, and in international charities. Some of them have been very effective. We had a remarkable afternoon here in the House of Lords when Jimmy Carter came to describe his campaign for disease-free water, which he explained in his speech. The United Nations technical agencies have a long history of taking on more complex issues, regionally and globally. These agencies have also helped Governments with sustainable development, and have had a big role in feeding into the United Nations centre in New York. For example, the International Maritime Organization, which is based here in London—an NGO with which I am involved—supports and works with them. It recently took on the role of guiding the global shipping industry to reduce its carbon emissions, which of course significantly exceed the carbon emissions from aviation. Sustainable global policies should aim to reduce the volume of shipping, although this would probably impact on the global economy. The question of the economy and the environment has to be kept in balance at all times, but this new initiative by the IMO is a very important development.

A similarly important sustainable goal would be the limitation of vehicle emissions, which, even though it is being discussed, is not happening in the UK. In France, by contrast, there are road signs encouraging motorists to limit their speed in order to reduce emissions. In Britain, the signs on a motorway will tell you how fast you have to go to get to Bristol in 90 minutes, or whatever it is. That is why the UK is not raising this kind of sustainability goal. I have raised this question in Written PQs, with no satisfactory result.

Last week I was in Malaysia at a meeting of climate environment networks, in particular the Asian area of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They were reviewing the issues in Asia. For example, there are critical issues such as the loss of forests, which is affected by global warming and sea-level rise but also by logging when richer countries remove their trees. This is a very important question. It is not just everybody working together. One fears that some countries are taking resources, which is having a bad effect on poorer countries.

Another important development is increased disease in some Asian countries. It is a major issue that needs to be considered internationally. Another is the question of water. It was remarkable to hear at the meeting that water availability in the slum areas of big cities is about 20% of what it was 10 years ago. With a greatly reduced water supply in urban communities you have women queuing up to get water at 3 am. This is an issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, emphasised.

The Asian Network on Climate Science and Technology has been set up in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, with support from the Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre at Cambridge. This has led to Asian scientists and technicians focusing on meetings in that part of the world rather than going to the United States or the EU. We need much more technical strength, solidity and co-ordination in the developing regions of the world. When you focus on that, you find that all sorts of developments are encouraged, which do not happen so well if all the technical people go and have their meetings in developed countries.

One network of technical groups has been very effective in looking at the effects of climate on urban areas. It is interesting that these networks have already developed new approaches, such as restoring communities after massive floods and using computer-based planning networks for extreme weather conditions. Some of these methods are of considerable interest, even to developed countries such as the UK.

In conclusion, global collaboration and sustainability are an important part of the UK’s policies, and we should work as closely as we can with all the networks of the world. As other speakers commented, the UK has big problems of its own and we should learn a lot from others.

Incident in Salisbury

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, Porton is a very famous laboratory and works very closely with the US and other countries. Could the Minister assure us that there are already comparisons and supportive investigations of that sort?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I apologise; did the noble Lord say “Porton”, as in Porton Down?

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[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Yes.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Obviously Porton Down is very close to where the incident took place. We co-operate in various areas but I do not know whether we are co-operating with the US on this particular issue. I can find out for the noble Lord.

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, a very distinguished chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, on having this debate at an appropriate time, one year after the Sendai framework, which is the result of steady progress over the past 30 years in reducing the impact of natural disasters.

There was a decade of natural disasters from the late 1980s to the 1990s. Then, as the noble Earl implied, there was the Yokohama meeting, which I attended as head of the Met Office, when the technical challenges were outlined. For example, some of the important developments were the advances in warnings for many kinds of disaster. At that time there was tremendous resistance to the sharing of data; some disasters could have been considerably reduced had there been a better exchange. By the time we got to Hyogo, 10 years later, some of this exchange of data was improved but there were also new technologies for the dissemination of data.

In the past few years we have moved on to the question of climate change effects. At the IPCC, in which Dr Murray was involved, there was great progress in understanding how natural disasters can become more severe and frequent with climate change. The Sendai meeting and framework began to focus on the social and governmental role. One of the important points was that this has stimulated much more work in universities and institutions in the UK on social vulnerability and post-disaster resilience. I have a colleague here this afternoon from UCL’s institute, which is a result of this movement.

I emphasise the continuing need to understand natural disasters, predict them and warn about them, realising that we still have a very big task, particularly with earthquakes. When Dr Wahlström came to London before the Sendai meeting, we discussed the question of major challenges to establishing improvements. I think it has generally been accepted in all fields of endeavour, including science and technology, that some of the greatest challenges can be overcome when there are targets—a man on the moon is one example, cancer is another—and meteorology is no exception. It has to be remembered that in the 1990s, textbooks in the United States said that it was impossible to improve the accuracy of forecasting for tropical cyclones, hurricanes or tornados. In fact, a few years later, there was very significant improvement.

There is still considerable uncertainty about earthquakes, which cause some of the greatest problems and really are national disasters—there is nothing that causes such disasters like the natural disturbances in the earth. Research groups in Russia and China and some run by private individuals in the United States are working on that problem, and I find it very disappointing that these most important events, in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people can die, are not mentioned as a target by the Sendai framework. Targets are really important.

The framework is very good at saying how we should use science and technology, but if we had this as a major United Nations goal and used all the technologies—I know about some of those in the defence sector—there could be improvement. All our newspapers today were covering Prince Harry, who is in Nepal supporting the people there following the recent earthquake. These new developments will come from integrating massive computational studies covering areas from the outer atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean and through the layers of the earth. Some of the physical processes are still quite uncertain.

The framework, quite rightly, points out how physical processes and social impacts from natural disasters differ between regions. The framework has some important recommendations about how these goals might be agreed and promoted through a committee of the United Nations natural disaster body or through its science and technology advisory group. I am very pleased to see that this advisory group has specialised groups in the different regions of the world, because one of the things we know is that natural and meteorological events, including pollution, flooding and many others, vary greatly from one region to another. There is much local expertise. I make this perhaps trivial point because many of the computer models used for climate are used the same way all over the world, and people now realise that that may not be the best way to do it.

In the past, the United Nations agencies had strong records in reducing certain risks, such as those in meteorology that I mentioned, but there are other geophysical risks that have had less resources focused on them. I hope that the UNISDR STAG will have the strength to divert resources to the critical areas, one of which remains hydrology and the question of floods. The other important point is about practice in other parts of the world: the Philippines, for example, has the most advanced system in the world, using modern communication methods and online computer modelling to see how floods move through areas and through different houses. Comparing how they are doing it there with, I am afraid to say, some of the ways that we are doing it here in the UK, could offer good examples of exchange from the south to the north.

I believe that the Foreign Office also has a role in co-ordinating UK representation at these agencies, and in that sense it needs to collaborate with the European Union. I continue to think that the proportion of funds devoted to water resources and flooding is too small. Having made these points, I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Selborne for securing this debate, and I thank all noble Lords for their excellent contributions. The debate has demonstrated that we did not need lots of speakers—its quality has been excellent. I share the same breakfast listening in the mornings as the noble Lord, Lord Collins. It was a really interesting programme this morning and I listened to it when I was stuck in traffic, trying to get to the department.

I see on a near-daily basis how the lives of poor people are threatened by the effects of disasters. A changing climate, combined with rising populations, urbanisation, environmental degradation, war and conflict, is challenging progress to end extreme poverty and is tipping more people into crisis. We know that early action and work to build the resilience of countries, communities and people can save lives when disaster hits. Indeed, early action and resilience building helps protect livelihoods, safeguards development gains and offers better value for money.

We have had a range of questions. I hope that I will be able to respond to some of them from my notes. I have also taken note of some of the questions that noble Lords asked, but if I fail to respond to any of them today I undertake to write to noble Lords.

Since 2010 we have significantly improved the quality and speed of our humanitarian response. We have prioritised disaster preparedness. In the new UK aid strategy, we identify strengthening resilience and our response to crises as one of our four strategic objectives. We are committed to doing more to strengthen the resilience of poor and fragile countries to disasters, shocks and climate change.

DfID and the Cabinet Office have worked with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction on developing the Sendai framework. In March of last year my right honourable friend the Minister of State for International Development, Mr Desmond Swayne, spoke at the third UN world conference in Sendai. The framework is coherent with other international processes. It builds international co-operation and global partnerships, strengthens disaster risk governance and takes account of the particular needs of countries that are at risk of conflicts and insecurity as well as natural hazards. It ensures that development investments are disaster-proof.

Over the past five years since the publication of the humanitarian emergency response review, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, my department has focused on building the resilience of poor and vulnerable people to disasters. Here we have seen real leadership. The UK was the first donor country to define and frame disaster resilience, and we have successfully influenced the funding strategies of others. Internally, we have embedded disaster resilience in all our country programmes, integrated resilience in our work on climate change and improved the coherence of our humanitarian and development work.

I have some examples. In Ethiopia we contribute £276 million to a £2.2 billion programme that provides guaranteed employment for more than 8 million people on activities to stop soil erosion and preserve scarce water. This has transformed formerly famine-stricken areas of Ethiopia. El Niño has hit Ethiopia hard, but a combination of this kind of preparedness work and concerted action by the Ethiopian Government and donors has meant that there has been no repeat of the horrific famine of the 1980s.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned Nepal. Prior to the devastating earthquakes in April and May 2015, the UK was already supporting a five-year programme to build Nepal’s disaster management system. This included measures to strengthen legislation on land use and building codes to retrofit key buildings such as hospitals to withstand earthquakes, to build the capacity of the Government and communities to organise, and to pre-position goods and train people to save lives in the immediate aftermath. So when the earthquake hit, the first relief was distributed within hours. When more relief was needed, the humanitarian staging area that the UK had built with the United Nations at Kathmandu airport helped accelerate the response by approximately three weeks. The experience in Nepal shows how the Sendai framework can be implemented and how it can directly save lives.

The UK is also leading the way in understanding and sharing what works best. The Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters programme, known as BRACED, will help more than 5 million people, especially women and children, cope with the impacts of extreme climate events by creating new coalitions of civil society, government, media, universities and meteorological offices to build community resilience, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, alluded to in his opening remarks. Lessons from this will be used to improve local and national policies and build institutional knowledge.

But we know that timely responses depend on finances also being in place well before disasters strike. Here, the UK has a strong story to tell, with the Africa Risk Capacity programme using modern finance mechanisms to enable African Governments to obtain natural disaster insurance, reducing the losses incurred by extreme weather events and natural disasters, and helping protect livelihoods. After the poor rains in late 2014, the system paid out £18 million to Senegal, Mauritania and Niger, providing food for 1.3 million people and fodder for nearly 600,000 livestock.

Before I conclude, I will respond to some of the questions asked by noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Selborne asked about the national risk register. He rightly drew attention to the importance of the role that that plays in the discussion on national infrastructure and resilience investment. The national risk register and the national risk assessment are based on, and rooted in, scientific evidence. The Government Office for Science and the broad range of stakeholders that it represents are important partners in delivering a rigorous and evidence-based assessment of the hazards and threats faced by the UK.

My noble friend also asked about DfID building resilience to pandemics such as Ebola. The UK led the international response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, and we have committed £427 million. The response brought together 10 government departments and four other non-public bodies, along with non-governmental organisations and charities. While huge challenges remain to help Sierra Leone rebuild its economy, the rapid and flexible cross-government UK action helped to save several thousand lives and put a halt to the outbreak of the disease spreading further. We must also pay great tribute to the people of Sierra Leone themselves, who were on the ground working very closely with UK personnel.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned targets and earthquakes. Sendai is designed as a broad framework with guiding principles and priorities for action and increased strengthening of the role of the Science Advisory Group. Our expertise has long played a strong role and will continue to do so, but it is important to ensure that all forms of disaster are covered. We also need to make sure that we work with partners so that they will also be able to strengthen their systems.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned gender, and how we are supporting and protecting women and girls in disasters. As the noble Lord is aware, it is a subject very close to my own heart and very much at the centre of all the programmes that DfID is working in. We know that data are limited and that there is evidence that more women are likely to die after a disaster than men. Similarly, child sexual abuse has historically increased after emergencies, perhaps just because of the breakdown of social structures. The risks to survival of transactional sex are high, and the needs of women and girls are often overlooked during humanitarian crises. It is really important not only that we are only constantly mindful of that ourselves but that we remind donor partners with which we work and the countries in which we work that we should not overlook those challenging needs that particularly face women and girls. We are in a unique position, with both humanitarian operations and long-term development programmes, to address the immediate needs of survivors of disasters and those who are prey to sexual violence in emergencies. Ultimately, we need to tackle the underlying root causes of abuse so that gender inequality and discrimination are eradicated.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about funding. As he is aware, we have scaled up our support to meet our share of the developed countries’ commitment to provide $100 billion towards climate change activities. That is an increase of 50%, so our own contribution is $5.8 billion.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Does it focus enough on water?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I hope that our response is comprehensive so that it takes into account all the issues that the noble Lord and indeed all of us should be concerned about on the effects of climate change. I am pretty certain that we will talk to colleagues to get a more detailed answer around the issue of water. While I was a Minister at DECC it was very much part of the wider debate, so I am pretty certain that it is not an overlooked subject matter.

Funding for work in response to climate change, for meeting our commitments and to meet other donors is done through the International Climate Fund. We work with our colleagues at DECC and Defra to make sure that not only do we reduce poverty and provide clean energy but we make sure that we are part of the economic growth agenda. Disaster financing should focus on the vulnerable, the poorest and those furthest away from help. It is likely that, while we are looking at development issues, we need to constantly make sure that humanitarian finance, which is currently under massive strain, is not overlooked and keeps pace with the rising need. Consequently, there is a need for Governments, businesses and individuals to build resilience against these disaster risks and develop rigorous disaster risk management strategies. Plans for risk financing, including insurance, should be an integral part of that.

I think I have run out of time, but I conclude by saying that the UK will meet its commitments under the new UK ODA strategy to strengthen resilience and our response to crises. The world humanitarian summit in May is a once-in-a-generation moment for the UK to showcase its experience and change the way that we work in the poorest and most fragile countries. As we come together to agree new ways of working to save lives and reduce hardship around the globe, the UK will play its role in making the summit a success. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Selborne, who reminds us of the work being done but also reminds us not to take our foot off the pedal in making sure that, as a lead development partner, we press other donors to implement and carry out their responsibilities, as the UK so successfully does.

Air Pollution

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend makes a good point, and this is something that Public Health England is taking up. We work very closely with the Department of Health and Public Health England. It is extremely important that we encourage research into the effect of pollutants.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, what is the Government’s policy on diesel engines? Defra has now realised that they are in fact a dangerous source of pollution, as does the Mayor of London. Japan has for many years discouraged diesel engines. What is the Government’s policy in this direction?

[Baroness Northover]

We are looking very closely at this. The noble Lord will know that, in the past, it was thought that diesel engines would be less polluting and that studies of diesel engines in factories indicated that that was so. However, it did not prove to be the case when the engines were used out on the road, and that has serious implications.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, one of the features of the Queen’s Speech was that it implied that there would be less legislation. I believe that that is excellent because—this has nothing to do with party politics—it enables this House to spend more time considering big issues, including monitoring the programmes of government.

The policies and actions of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DfID are very important in helping the UK’s commercial and industrial interests, as well as ensuring that the UK works with other nations to deal with the global problems of climate change, the threat to the environment, global pandemics, and prospective food and water shortages, some of which were referred to by the retiring Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, and the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey. The role of science in this area of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and defence was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Reid.

I declare interests as a professor, as a director of a small company and as a member of GLOBE, and I want to touch on that. With its limited numbers, further reduced by this Government, could the Foreign Office be more effective in collaborating with other UK, UN and EU organisations? First, I want to compliment the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for its support for and collaboration with NGOs, one of which is GLOBE. This has had the remarkable effect of bringing together Ministers, civil servants, parliamentarians and now UN agencies to achieve, rather unexpectedly, general agreement about national legislation to deal with climate change. There has been some learning in this process but it has been effective, and I believe that there is, as it were, a general moral in that.

However, I should like to introduce a slightly more sour note in commenting that the FCO could be considerably more effective in working with other branches of government to promote UK interests and commercial interests. The United States embassies use US government agencies to promote US business in quite a forward and ruthless way, rather unlike our embassies. This is a point made by Americans and foreigners all around the world. We are very good at some of the broader political issues but, as I see it, often we are not so great at pushing for British interests. The Chancellor increased some funding for this purpose. We had a debate in the House of Lords but I believe that more can be done. One point is that UK government agencies could provide objective information about UK companies and products. Here, I have a vested interest, as I say. However, it is nothing like the kind of information provided by the United States, which has, for example, whole sections in its embassy in Beijing pushing US technology.

Some UK companies felt that there were great opportunities to develop products based on the UK’s success with the Olympic Games and our success in developing east London—something that the British Government wanted to happen. However, the funding being put forward by other countries for similar kinds of urban renewal projects makes it quite difficult for British companies to compete, as has been stated to me.

The United States also uses its technical and commercial colleagues as part of its delegations to meetings of the United Nations technical agencies. I used to represent the UK at the World Meteorological Organisation. We had civil servants; the Americans had a whole array of people. Every night, they would ring up the Department of State and would get information back. It was a very different operation. I believe that this is a significant problem and that the Foreign Office should do more in monitoring and promoting the use of the UK delegation to the United Nations, not only to be effective but to promote UK interests. In fact, some of the UK government agencies which are part of these delegations do not take it as seriously as they should. Indeed, a recent chief executive of a UK agency said, “I don’t regard this as part of my job at all”. The job description of the new Foreign Office chief scientific adviser did not even mention the United Nations or the UN agencies, which are enormously important for all these technical issues.

As the Government, through the United Nations department at the Foreign Office, are not able, or choose not to, give sufficient information about what is going on, if you really want to find out what is happening in this whole world of UN agencies and you are no longer an official, you can use, on either your BlackBerry or your iPhone, the extremely effective information provided by IID, an organisation in Canada. From that, for example, we can learn this week about what is happening in the Arctic Council. Last week, we could hear about what was happening in discussions on the Stockholm and other conventions. Surely, if the United Kingdom wants to promote itself as a country which is really on top of the use of the internet and communications, the Foreign Office should be at the forefront of informing at the very least parliamentarians but also, one would hope, the public about what it is doing.

Through a PQ, I had correspondence from the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. Apparently this year is the International Year of Water Co-operation but no information is to be provided about the UK objectives and there is to be no report on what happens at the United Nations. Yet today I understand that the Prime Minister is talking at the United Nations about the importance of water. Therefore, we really need to do more.

Equally important in the role of UN agencies is their help in developing countries. I am sure that the late Lord Brett, who was a great advocate of the International Labour Organisation, would have been reassured to hear that the ILO played a very positive role in calls for trade union involvement and more consultation following the Dhaka disaster.

I should like to touch on Europe, which the Minister was very enthusiastic about. “Hear, hear” could be heard a lot as she made her speech. The Ministers in BIS are even more positive about the EU, and I particularly commend the enthusiasm of Mr Willetts in promoting the space industry. This involves not only software, in which the UK has often been very strong, but hardware, which leads to jobs. Of course, David Willetts has a constituency with a lot of factories in the space business, but it is a very important aspect.

We need our UK embassies and consulates to inform the rest of the world not only about the UK’s technology but about how we are working with the other countries of Europe. It is very interesting that last week in China the French Prime Minister spoke about the excellence of the Airbus. The wings of the Airbus are made in Britain. How often does the British Prime Minister talk about a European project in which the British and French are participating? Then the German Prime Minister might talk about Rolls-Royce, which has factories in Germany. This would be the development of a broader way of working. When you go to embassies and consulates, it is regrettable how little advocacy there is about the important role of the UK in working on the most advanced projects in Europe.

Finally, I should like to say—perhaps uniquely in this afternoon’s debate—that people have been talking about the UK as an important global player with networks and so on. However, surely we should be thinking beyond the framework of World War II and the Cold War. It is extraordinary that this little country, then with 2% of the world’s GDP and a population of 50 million, along with France should still have seats on the United Nations Security Council. Surely one seat should be for Europe with a population of 500 million, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, and the other for India, which is soon to be the country with the largest population. This will not happen immediately but surely there should be the beginnings of a discussion about the future by Parliament, the United Nations associations and other foreign relations. We cannot carry on with this World War II framework.