Overseas Development Aid: Budget

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D’Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, for introducing this important topic. The drop in the money available for ODA, together with the IMF special drawing rights windfall, raises questions again about a strategic approach to development programmes, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol has already pointed out. This is a useful moment to ask ourselves what are the most likely trends that will cause severe hardship to local communities and ourselves in the near future?

There are at least two major trends: first, the impact of climate change and its relation to food availability and, second, the massive outpouring of people from drought or flood-stricken regions to more temperate developed nations, including the UK. The emigration is already apparent, but it is likely to become unmanageable within the next few years. Surely this calls for a combined effort to use the moneys available to shore up programmes to deal with these two related crises. The temptation—already a rumour, as has been pointed out—is to use some of the 20 billion of these SDRs as additional ODA, thereby silencing, or hopefully silencing, critics of the reduction to 0.5% of GNI and juggling the continuation of many existing programmes.

However, there is much more at stake. The world is facing almost unimaginable catastrophes. I cite just one, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. How is the international community going to feed most of Afghanistan this winter, which begins next month—less than a week away? How is Europe going to cope humanely with the potential onslaught of environmental refugees? Are our current ODA theories and practice fit for purpose, or do we need radically to rethink what kind of assistance, for what, to whom and how will help to alleviate the disasters that we inevitably face?

If we accept that climate change and population movements are the key life-threatening events that we face, what kind of plans do we have to work with other donor nations in the leverage of significant sums of money for synergistic effect in order to make a real difference: massive, well thought-through and coherent programmes of strategic impact to limit the effects of climate change and limit the movement of people? Instead, we are still tinkering with funding fossil-fuel developments, such as the Mozambique liquid natural gas project, funded by the UK Government to the tune of £1.15 billion. Incidentally, this will increase Mozambique’s emissions by some 10%. Why are we not withdrawing from expensive projects such as these in favour of renewable energy sources? We urgently need much smarter ODA.

The time-honoured traditions of development and humanitarian aid, carried out bilaterally, multilaterally and by thousands of NGOs and INGOs, have to be rethought in a spirit of international co-operation to save our planet and millions of lives. There is no longer a choice, and I challenge the Government to set a pathway and take courageous decisions on how best to use SDRs for the international good.