Global Population Growth

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Lords Chamber

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

The noble Baroness raises perhaps the most important issue of all. There is no pathway to net zero without massive increase in our support for protecting and restoring nature. Nature-based solutions could contribute a very significant proportion of the solution in the most cost-effective manner. Only about 3% of global climate finance goes on nature, which is madness. We are challenging that and attempting to change it. The Prime Minister committed last year to doubling our climate finance to £11.6 billion. Since then, he has also committed that £3 billion of that, nearly 30%, will be spent on nature-based solutions. We are asking other donor countries to do the same. But we need to go beyond public money, so we are attempting to build a coalition of countries committed to shifting land-use subsidies, so that instead of incentivising destruction, they incentivise protection, and much more besides.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, addressing population growth through much greater support for family planning is one of the key solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss, as proposed by the Dasgupta review. Why will the Government not use COP 26 to call on the world’s leaders to fund family planning?

[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.