Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Bishop of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Winchester (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am conscious of the immense privilege that is mine to have a seat as of right in your Lordships’ House. I am very grateful for the welcome and help I have received from noble Lords and staff, both today and as I have been inducted into its ways.

The See of Winchester, which I serve, was founded in 660. In 838, at the Great Council of Kingston, King Ecgberht of Wessex entered into a compact with the Sees of Winchester and Canterbury, in return for their promise of support for his son Aethelwulf’s claim to the Throne. Aethelwulf was the father of Alfred the Great. That ancient compact was a key moment in the developing relationship between Church and state that has done so much to shape to the life of this country, as together we have sought the common good—and it is to that theme of the common good that I will return later.

I turn specifically to the matter of this debate. In looking at this issue of international development, I believe we must pay proper attention to two cardinal principles: internationalism and localism. It is vital that, as a country, we take an internationalist approach to international development. Global problems, including climate change, require global solutions, and nothing less will do. But, in all that, the local must not be lost. Effective development must always have purchase at the grass roots in specific contexts and communities, or it will be simply unsustainable.

In my clerical career, I have been immensely privileged to have been given both a broad international perspective and unique insights into the local and particular. I have led a church in a rather unremarked but wonderful corner of south London, and I have led another at the heart of Paris, exercising ministry at the crossroads of the world. I have led a global mission agency deeply committed to pursuing a global agenda through the context of the very local. I have been Bishop of Truro in Cornwall, a place with great international reach historically and with its own much-prized local culture.

I now serve in Winchester, a diocese that can lay good claim to having shaped the wider world—think of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes overseeing the compilation of the authorised version of the Bible and its global impact. But it is also a diocese made up of truly distinctive local places: Winchester, England’s ancient capital; the great port city of Southampton; the burgeoning boroughs of Bournemouth, Basingstoke and Christchurch; our historic market towns; and innumerable picture-perfect Hampshire villages. Each is a place of value in its own right but also part of a greater whole.

This theme of globalism and localism has particular relevance when we look at one theme critical to international development: freedom of religion or belief—FoRB. It is critical because the denial of FoRB is inimical to effective community development. As Bishop of Truro, at the invitation of the then Foreign Secretary, the Member for South West Surrey, the right honourable Jeremy Hunt MP, I authored a report on FoRB, the recommendations of which became and remain government policy. I am hugely grateful to my friend in the other place, the Member for Congleton, Fiona Bruce MP, who holds the role of Prime Minister’s special envoy for FoRB, for her dogged commitment to the implementation of those recommendations, which have even led to the passing of a UN Security Council resolution on this issue for the first time.

In this global struggle for FoRB, in which the UK plays a leading role, we value both the international—this is a universal right and a global problem—and the local, in that it is minority communities that are most under threat from its denial. The denial of FoRB is a scourge on local minority communities and, therefore, on their development. Its denial can be laid squarely at the feet of both weak government and intolerant, authoritarian and nationalistic regimes that brook no dissent. This is therefore a growing global problem that requires a global response, and I am honoured to play my part, along with many others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in such a response.

It is vital that we act globally to protect the distinctive and the local, and there is a moral connection between the global struggle for FoRB and the challenge of climate change. In the end, only plural states with a heart for the common global good, rather than their own self-aggrandisement, will truly care about these issues. So action on FoRB and action on climate change spring from a common concern for the common good. In tackling both, we seek the health and welfare of the whole planet, and a common good that, in the end, can be expressed only through flourishing local communities. Promoting FoRB promotes plural, prosperous and stable states, contributing significantly to international development and global security.

In tackling climate change and FoRB together, we must stand against those regimes that are more concerned with preserving their own power than seeking the local rights of minorities and the global good of the whole planet. I urge His Majesty’s Government to maintain a broad international perspective and to value and treasure the local and particular, both things which make this world so rich and so blessed a place.