International Mother Earth Day

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that debt holds back countries in a completely unfair way, particularly those which are most vulnerable, and we are committed to improving the international debt system. We are pushing for improvements to the G20 common framework, and we use our position in official creditor committees to help to return countries to debt sustainability. One example I would give her is that we in the UK pioneered the climate resilient debt clauses, which pause debt repayments when a developing country is hit by a disaster. I am delighted that France and three other countries have followed suit, and that this is now becoming an established form of debt alleviation.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, in the White Paper we are talking about, there is a short but quite good section on working with the Commonwealth. Given that security goes with development—there is no development, let alone green development, without reasonable security and political stability—would the Minister remind the authors of this aspect, particularly as the Chinese are now actively undermining the security of numerous Commonwealth countries? The Solomon Islands is a good example of the latest one, but there are many others. Should we not have this aspect of the whole development question rather higher in the agenda than we seem to have it now?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend raises a really important issue in the run up to CHOGM, where we want to show that we are using the Commonwealth in an effective way, in supporting small island developing states in particular to manage the adaptation to climate change. It is being held in Samoa, so his point is absolutely right. On Friday of last week, I was in Cyprus at the Commonwealth Ocean Ministers Meeting. You cannot sit and listen to the representative from Tuvalu without understanding the importance of this to them. It is an existential threat, and the work we are doing on SIDS this year in the run up to CHOGM, and in the future, shows that it is an absolute priority, and the Commonwealth is an excellent way of supporting so many of them.