Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble friend Lady Northover for initiating this debate, and I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester on his eloquent maiden speech. I declare my interests as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Africa, and council member of the Royal African Society.

As we have heard, over the past three decades the world has made significant progress in tackling some of the core challenges of development, and the UK’s contribution to that success has been significant. The Department for International Development, now sadly dismantled, was a beacon around the world. The expertise of our academic, scientific and research institutions, and the hands-on knowledge and experience of UK-based INGOs, helped the UK deliver real and lasting impact as part of a sustained global effort to bring about change and progress. That effort brought results. Over recent decades, the proportion of people who were undernourished almost halved. The share of the global population living in extreme poverty fell even more dramatically, from 47% in developing regions to 14%. The incidence rate of TB fell by 17% and of malaria by 40%. The proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water more than halved. At a global level, gender disparity in education was eliminated.

These are huge successes, and I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that at this time, when the future can seem so bleak and progress can appear almost impossible, it is particularly important that we celebrate this success as a reminder of what we can achieve as a global community if we have the will to do so. Sadly, however, some of these successes have gone into reverse in recent years. As Action Against Hunger pointed out in its excellent briefing, the number of people facing extreme food insecurity is rising, with millions of children dying unnecessarily every year from malnutrition-related causes.

Across the sustainable development goals, progress is well off-track and in several cases has gone into reverse. As the UN Secretary-General has warned:

“Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been”.


The climate crisis is only exacerbating these challenges and, cruelly, the people on the front line are those who have contributed least to climate change and are most vulnerable to its effects.

The facts are stark. The World Bank estimates that climate change could push an additional 100 million people below the poverty line by 2030. The Pentagon describes climate change as a threat multiplier and a key driver of fragility. Stanford University research estimates that climate change has increased economic inequality between developed and developing economies by 25% since 1960. Yet no country in the rich world is acting with anything like the urgency the situation demands. Sadly, the UK’s record in the vanguard of action has now been put at risk as a result of decisions by the current Government in the past year.

The Africa APPG’s inquiry into just energy transition, which is being conducted in conjunction with the Royal African Society and Oxfam, has highlighted the risk of a dangerous disconnect between the global north and global south on what justice means in this context and how it can be delivered. The inquiry has also shown that if we are prepared to work in genuine partnership with the continent, a huge opportunity exists dramatically to increase energy access across Africa, spurring sustainable economic development, while reducing carbon emissions and the health impacts of burning carbon fuels.

For a long time, we talked as if climate change was something that might happen if we did not sort things out soon, but it is not that. It is happening now and has been for a long time. We all know the story about the frog which, if put in a pot of cold water and gently heated to boiling point, will not jump out. Some people say that experiments show that a frog is not so stupid, and these prove the story is not true, but they are wrong. The story is true: it is just that it is not about frogs; it is about humans. The water is literally heating up in the oceans around us, yet we continue to throw fuel on the fire. Now is the time when we have to choose whether to wake up to our responsibilities to the world and to ourselves, and to act with the urgency the moment demands, or to continue to slumber and eventually boil.