International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am delighted that the Bill has been introduced by the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore), and I am pleased to follow the former Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).

During my nine and a bit years in the House, I have had the huge privilege of visiting overseas projects to see at first hand the excellent work done by DFID, along with NGOs such as Results UK, Oxfam, World Vision, Farm Africa and so on. The visits have ranged from looking at health projects in Malawi, where they are tackling TB and HIV through vaccination programmes and advice on family planning, to going to the camps for internally displaced people in northern Uganda, which was the first time I had been overseas as an MP—I was with the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), who I hope will speak in a moment—and sparked in me a realisation that we can do so much for people. Those in the camps, who had been displaced from their homes for the best part of two decades, were living on one meal and their clothes were charity handouts from the UK, but we could see the work that DFID was doing. Since then, I have had the privilege of seeing many other projects on the ground.

Today I will focus on an issue that was touched on briefly by the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk—that of climate change and the need for overseas development assistance to be directed towards the countries that are most at risk to help with adaptation and mitigation. As the shadow Secretary of State for International Development said on another occasion:

“The climate is the central development issue of the next century. If we fail to tackle the changes in our environment, all the gains we make elsewhere—from health and poverty to food and sanitation—will be reversed.”

I have just returned from three days in El Salvador with my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), the shadow Minister for International Development, and Christian Aid. That country is the fourth most at risk from climate change. El Salvador is not currently in receipt of DFID funding, but much of what I have to say is relevant to countries that are.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

As a former trustee of Christian Aid and television foreign correspondent, I agree that we must support the poorest people in the world, but does the hon. Lady not agree that it is completely crazy for a deeply indebted nation to ring-fence any spending, especially when we are failing in our first duty by cutting defence spending?

[Kerry McCarthy]

No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. That point has been more than adequately answered by other Members in this debate.

As I said, El Salvador is not in receipt of DFID funding, but some countries that do receive it are also at risk from climate change. In Kashmir, 460 people have died in monsoon floods and 1 million people have been displaced from their homes. Countries such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malawi, Kenya and many small island states are also extremely vulnerable. Of the £12 billion the UK spends on ODA each year, about £500 million is officially classified as climate finance. I will make the case for continuing to fund those projects and, indeed, for strengthening them.

Changing weather patterns and extreme climatic events have left El Salvador suffering both droughts and flooding. We saw on our visit how this year’s maize harvest has suffered because of the drought. As most of the farming is subsistence farming, people are going hungry as a result. There is a growing food security crisis in El Salvador and a food aid programme has been rolled out across parts of the country.

We also saw efforts to combat flooding by building levees, replanting mangroves and undertaking reforestation programmes. As in the UK, changes in agricultural land use, deforestation, and soil erosion and degradation have exacerbated the impact of the floods and increased the likelihood of landslides.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. She has made an important point about forests and replanting. Is there enough international support for reforestation, not just in El Salvador but throughout the river system of central America? The way in which the boundaries are drawn means that it has to be an international effort.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I know that my hon. Friend takes an interest in Mexico and Latin America as a whole. This issue affects the whole continent. Reforestation would help not only to prevent the risks that I am describing by acting as a natural barrier to flooding but to reduce carbon emissions because the forests are the lungs of the continent. I agree that more could be done not only to increase reforestation, but to halt the process of deforestation, which I will come to in a moment.

In countries such as El Salvador, which are already vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods and landslides, such natural threats turn into full-blown disasters because of the high levels of poverty and vulnerability, and the lack of infrastructure. We spoke to local farmers and environmental activists about the impact of the significant number of climatic events over the past decade, including Hurricane Mitch, Hurricane Stan and, most recently, tropical depression 12-E, when 1.5 metres of rain fell in 10 days, destroying crops, killing livestock and displacing people from their homes and land.

The region’s climate vulnerability is worsening. The UN report on climate change identified three challenges for central America: to resolve high levels of socio-economic and environmental vulnerability; to promote climate change adaptation; and to move towards sustainable, low carbon economics based on renewable sources.

Now is a critical time in addressing this problem. The world is looking to secure a new climate deal in Paris in December 2015. A new framework of post-2015 sustainable development goals will be agreed next year by the UN to replace the millennium development goals. It is important that climate resilience and disaster risk reduction are included in those goals. Thirdly, the Hyogo framework for action, which is the globally agreed approach to managing disaster risk reduction, will be replaced after 2015 with a new resilience framework which needs to address the challenges posed by disasters, climate change, natural resources management, conflict and poverty in an integrated way. It is not just about mitigation and adaptation—introducing climate-resilient crops, early warning systems, protection from flooding and the other things I have mentioned—but about developing a rights-based approach and about climate justice.

The countries most at risk from man-made climate change are not those responsible for causing it. They have much smaller carbon footprints than developed industrialised countries—countries in which multinational companies, particularly in the extractive and farming industries, exacerbate the problem by displacing people from their land, replacing sustainable agriculture with monocrops, deforestation on a massive scale, and the use of pesticides that infect the water supply and much more.

The UN committee on loss and damage, which is the closest thing to climate justice, will report in 2016. In El Salvador, environmental tribunals have been introduced. Judges are charged with assessing expert scientific evidence, and the burden of proof rests on the polluter to prove their innocence, thereby confronting economic powers that until now have too often had impunity on environmental violations.

Much more is to be done across the world to protect, strengthen and enforce climate rights. We heard disturbing accounts of how the central America free trade agreement has made it difficult for El Salvador to promote native seeds, which is part of the effort to reinstate organic farming, and to ban the import of pesticides. That is surely wrong. As part of the fight against climate change, we must also consider broader issues such as how we can encourage a different, more sustainable model of development in countries benefiting from ODA.

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech about the way the world’s poorest people are those most likely to be affected by climate change. I am sure she is aware that 75% of the population of Bangladesh is at risk from rising sea levels. Does she agree that one way we can help a country such as Bangladesh become more sustainable is through development assistance to build resilience in those communities, with early flood warning systems and adaptations to the way people live, so that lives can be saved?

[Kerry McCarthy]

The right hon. Lady is entirely correct and I am pleased she is speaking in this debate. Bangladesh is the country most vulnerable to climate change in the world, and adaptation is an important part of the issue, particularly with things such as early flood warning systems. We saw those in practice in El Salvador—perhaps we need to look more at that for certain parts of the UK as well. Adaptation with, for example, drought resilient crops and changing agricultural methods so that people can cope with extreme weather conditions—whether that be drought or huge rainfalls—is important, and DFID has a major role to play in supporting that through some of our agricultural expertise.

I went to Kenya with the all-party group on agriculture and food for development, and we looked at some of the work that Farm Africa is doing, on a very small scale, to help farmers adapt to changing conditions. Tiny measures with little financial output can result in much more sustainable and profitable farming. Good work is being done, but although DFID has done brilliant work on issues such as education, health and microfinance, to an extent agricultural development has been neglected. That is what feeds people. We cannot just rely on food aid programmes and handing out food to people who cannot afford to feed themselves; we must find ways to make their livelihoods sustainable.

[Mr Stephen O’Brien (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point, and although today’s debate is about enshrining spending on overseas aid in legislation, for agricultural prioritisation in DFID we need a unity of approach that recognises that not only protecting small holders but increasing farming is the way forward. Until there is more unity of approach, it will be difficult to get settled views on what projects to select.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Thirteen Members still wish to speak, so we need brevity from everybody.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree that a united approach would be good, and I am sure there are many issues we can discuss across the House. We must consider how we can encourage a different, more sustainable model of development in countries that benefit from our aid, and think carefully about how we can protect and preserve the world’s resources, rather than assuming that they are always there to be plundered.

To conclude, the fight to tackle climate change, increase climate resilience and protect vulnerable communities from climate risk must be a central part of DFID’s work, and the importance of that work is one reason why I speak today in support of enshrining the 0.7% target in law. As a first step, we need to make progress on climate finance, on the commitments made by Heads of State at Copenhagen and the creation of the Green Climate Fund, and on mobilising $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020. UK NGOs, led by Oxfam, are asking that the UK Government pledge $1 billion as a “fair” contribution to the Green Climate Fund, spread over three years. That should be possible because the UK has about £1.8 billion left to play with in the international climate fund, which is where the contribution would come from.

As we approach Ban Ki-moon’s summit in New York in September, it is up to the UK to show international leadership, as we have done on international development issues across the board, by being one of the first countries to state how much it is pledging to the green climate fund. We should show leadership on this issue; it is too important to leave to others.