Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the nature and environment activist Tony Juniper, now chairman of Natural England, wrote a very good book called What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? He showed the equivalent of the life of this planet in a train journey from London to Cambridge. Humanity’s existence on that journey is the equivalent of just walking from the train to the ticket machine. Only the last few steps of that equivalent journey have created the existential threat of climate change and the loss of nature that we know is so damaging and that can deliver such appalling insecurity and poverty, and which we are seeking to tackle.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I do not have time to do all the contributions credit, but I pay great tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for tabling it and for her years of dedication to international development.

Tackling climate change and ending poverty are two sides of the same coin, and we cannot achieve one without the other. The United Kingdom has a crucial role to play, working with our partners to address these critical global challenges. I thank the noble Baroness for setting the debate in context, and I pay great tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester for an outstanding maiden speech, in which he stated both the internationalist and the local approach, picked up by so many noble Lords. His was a really thoughtful contribution, and we are lucky to have him among us.

We cannot achieve our climate or development goals without full-scale economic transformation to deliver the trillions of dollars of investment needed. This must be coupled with unprecedented action to tackle climate change and to protect and restore nature. Our White Paper, which has been much commented on in this debate, was published in November. It establishes seven areas of transformative action, and this is how we will deliver a step change in international development by the end of the decade, ending extreme poverty and tackling climate change.

Among the key elements is going further and faster to mobilise international finance and increase private sector investment in development, while strengthening and reforming the international system to improve action on trade, tax and, crucially, debt, which was mentioned by many noble Lords—as well as tackling the scourge of dirty money, of course. This is also the key to unlocking the money needed to tackle global challenges, including climate change. We will build on resilience and enable adaptation for those affected by conflict, disasters and climate change. We will harness innovation, new technologies and scientific research to solve the problems that money alone cannot solve.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, was right to remind us that linked to this is the whole humanitarian piece. The Pentagon first described climate change as the great risk multiplier, and, with that risk to security, systems of governance collapse. With that comes increased authoritarianism—my noble friend Lord Hannan referred to this. In the White Paper, there is a stark graph showing the number of people in the world who now live under authoritarian regimes, compared to a few years ago.

The global context for international development has changed, and the White Paper sets out our approach and how it is changing with it. We will work in partnership, based on mutual respect, with leaders, communities and individuals shaping the solutions they need. This includes our work to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change and protect and restore nature. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eccles for mentioning Kew. At a number of recent COPs, we have seen how Kew is at the heart of this, with its 500 scientists delivering an extraordinary piece of soft power for Britain and a real gift to the world, in the understanding of the importance of plants and natural systems. I am grateful to my noble friend, who led it so well in the past. It is absolutely key to the kind of partnerships that we are creating around the world.

We also partner with countries to improve access to climate adaptation finance. For example, we co-chair the climate and development ministerial meetings with the UAE, Vanuatu and Malawi. The forum has already taken significant steps, including raising support for debt-suspension clauses in times of disaster and launching a task force to improve access to climate finance. Overall, the UK will prioritise its grant resources for the lowest-income countries and communities, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of conflict and climate change. We will go further and faster to mobilise more finance to help end extreme poverty and tackle the climate crisis.

I will mention the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich’s absolutely vital point about using local actors, as well as Church-based and faith-based organisations, along with civil society—this is so important. As was mentioned, in countries such as South Sudan, it is really important that we use them as part of the tools we need to win through.

Beginning with our work to reduce emissions, we remain committed to delivering net zero at home and driving progress internationally to keep 1.5 degrees centigrade within reach. Over the past 12 years, our international climate finance has provided almost 70 million people overseas with improved access to clean energy. We also reduced or avoided 86 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. The deal at COP 28 is a key moment in efforts to get to net zero by 2050. For the first time, there has been a global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, and I am proud of the UK’s pivotal role in the negotiations—but we still have a long way to go. We will continue to work with countries around the globe to accelerate action in this critical decade. I remind noble Lords who are concerned about recent announcements that we are reducing our dependency on our own oil exploration by 7% a year.

I turn to critical minerals. The green transition must not come at the expense of countries—often less developed ones—with critical mineral resources. The UK is working through the G7 and G20 with the IEA, through forums such as the Minerals Security Partnership, to support diverse, responsible and transparent critical mineral supply chains. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and her colleagues in the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Critical Minerals for their efforts on this vital issue.

I turn to adaptation. Over the past 12 years, our international climate finance has helped more than 100 million people cope with the effects of climate change. Our negotiators helped to agree a framework at the COP 28 summit to bring a global goal on adaptation to life; although there is further work to be done, this is a critical step towards more meaningful action. For those who doubt Britain’s place in multilateral diplomacy, on climate and nature, we were really at the heart of that COP and previous ones—and I pay huge tribute to all those who take part. We demean them if we talk it down; this was an extraordinary result. We were extremely gloomy about the possibility of getting the kind of agreement that we did, and certainly to start the whole thing with an agreement on loss and damage was very welcome.

My colleague, the Minister for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, announced at COP 28 £100 million of UK funding to help vulnerable people adapt to climate change. That includes £36 million for action in the Middle East and north Africa to support long-term climate stability; that will mobilise $500 million for clean energy and green growth projects, and support 450,000 people to adapt to climate change.

COP 28 also reaffirmed the importance of forests—and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for mentioning that—and nature, in tackling the climate crisis. I could list all the amounts of money that we have put towards that, but it is a crucial part of the work that we need to do globally to get the planet back on track.

We know that aid alone will not be enough when the annual financing gap for achieving the sustainable development goals is $3.9 trillion. We must unlock finance from other sources, and mobilise more private capital to low- and middle-income countries—a key point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. The UK is a major donor to international climate finance. At the G20, the PM announced that the UK will provide $2 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which is the biggest single funding commitment that the UK has made to help tackle climate change. Half of that contribution will go to adaptation.

Overall, we remain committed to spending £11.6 billion of new money on international climate finance by April 2026, including £3 billion to restore and sustainably manage nature. We are committed to tripling UK funding for adaptation to £1.5 billion next year to support those experiencing the worst impacts of climate change. The UK is delivering on its commitment. I have been party to lengthy discussions on this, and I assure noble Lords that we are serious about this.

We have heard the increasing calls from developing countries to reform the international financial system. The Prime Minister launched the global climate finance framework at COP 28 alongside leaders from Barbados, Kenya, India, France and others. This sets a new ambition on reforming finance to address our climate and development goals. A key pillar of reform is multiplying our impact by unlocking hundreds of billions of affordable finance from international financial institutions for key development priorities, and I shall visit one of those next week.

Our guarantees to multilateral development banks—a point that was raised—are also doing this. At the UN General Assembly, we announced a guarantee to unlock up to $1.8 billion of climate finance, supporting vulnerable people across Asia and the Pacific to adapt to climate needs. To note the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, the UK is leading the way on making the global financial system more shock responsive. We were the first to offer climate-resilient debt clauses in loans from our export credit agency, pausing repayments when disasters strike. COP 28 saw the UK announce take-up of this offer in Senegal and Guyana, with 73 countries backing the UN call to action for creditors to offer CRDCs by 2025.

I am conscious that I want to address the point made by my noble friend Lady Bottomley about malaria, which was also raised by others. We are making a range of investments to fight malaria, which include our £1 billion contribution to the seventh replenishment of the Global Fund. This supports vital tools in combating malaria, including the distribution of 86 million mosquito nets, 450,000 seasonal malaria chemoprevention treatments, and treatment and care for 18 million people—but the future is where the benefits really lie. We are funding R&D support on next-generation bed nets and vaccines and are supporting research that has paved the way for the rollout of RTS,S and R21 malaria vaccines, mainly targeting children under five who are at much greater risk of malaria. Additionally, we have supported the rollout of these vaccines through our £1.6 billion funding to GAVI, including for further clinical trials. This is really important work and, with our biotech industry and ability to move fast on vaccines, we can benefit from some of the tragedies we have had in recent years, such as Covid, and see real benefit to the world in what we are delivering.

Some noble Lords raised the issue of loss and damage. The UK’s contribution to the new fund is a new commitment that will be met from our ODA budget. It is part of our ongoing commitment to support developing countries to tackle the causes and impacts of climate change. I just want to take one of the dying minutes of this debate to mention SIDS—small island developing states. These are people who are facing the reality of climate change on a daily basis. We are absolutely at the heart of trying to support them. I do not have time to go into it, but it is an absolute priority for our country.

We must accelerate progress towards the sustainable developing goals; that matters now more than ever. We will continue to use all the tools that we have to deliver the transformation that the world needs to see, including building a bigger, better and fairer international system that addresses poverty and climate change. Together with our partners, we are building a healthier, greener and more prosperous future for generations to come.