Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and I join in the tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for bringing this vital debate. I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate on a wonderful maiden speech.

What we are now doing to the world by degrading the land surface, polluting the waters and adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate, is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is 3 billion tonnes, and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere. At the same time, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale of tropical rainforests, which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if, by their output, they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the wellbeing they achieve by the production of goods and services. Each country has to contribute, and industrialised countries must contribute more to help those that are not.

A framework is not enough. It will need to be filled out with specific undertakings and protocols, in diplomatic language, on the different aspects of climate change. These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application; otherwise, nations that accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out to those that do not.

These are not my words, though I cite them in a forthcoming book. They are not even borrowed from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, or the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who is to follow me, or David Attenborough, or Greta Thunberg. Whose words are these? For noble Lords who do not immediately recognise them, the clue was in the earlier speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. I am citing Lady Thatcher’s 1989 address to the UN General Assembly. Daily Mail, please take note.

The problem with Paris is that it contains no individual binding obligations, let alone sanctions relating to the meeting of targets. The regime, as we have heard, lacks a sense of international or historical fairness, given that some of the greatest industrial polluters since 1850 are both most the enriched and least affected by the damage.

Alongside other proposals that have been put to the Minister—and I guess to all five of the warring families of the party opposite—I urge a move back towards internationalism and improving the rules-based order, not just in relation to human rights, as has been advocated by the right reverend Prelate and possibly even the noble Lord opposite, but climate security. We need more internationalism and less unilateralism.

People say that Lady Thatcher responded in that way because she was a trained chemist, and I have no doubt that that was part of the special contribution. However, she was also a lawyer. Lawyers are denigrated by some current Conservatives, but I believe that those two sides of her education inspired that very important speech: science and law. We need both to deal with this crisis.