Climate Change in Developing Countries

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, both for initiating this debate and for his excellent speech. I also thank noble Lords on all sides for their excellent contributions. I declare my interest as the chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger.

There are three principal arguments that I want to make today. The first is that, although the UK—under Governments of all colours—has been in the vanguard of climate leadership, there is still a huge gap between where we are and where we need to be. The fact that the gap is even greater for some other industrial nations is no excuse for us.

Secondly, the people who are on the front line of the world’s failure to act are those who have contributed least to climate change and are most vulnerable to its effects. Unless the UK and the rest of the industrialised world radically adjust our economic approach, we are going to bring further misery upon those countries and their people and, ultimately, ourselves.

Thirdly, there is a real danger that “green” is becoming a dirty word in many front-line climate states, where there is growing anger at the rich world’s failure to act, our tendency to lecture and our refusal to take responsibility for the damage that has already been and continues to be done.

The facts, as we have heard, are stark. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s report, Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022, the rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993 and the 10-year average warming for the period 2013 to 2022 is now estimated to be 1.14 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline, compared with 1.09 degrees Celsius between 2011 and 2020. Further, ocean heat was at record levels in 2021—the latest year that it was assessed—and the upper 2,000-metre depth of the ocean continues to warm, a change that is irreversible on centennial to millennial timescales. The World Bank estimates that climate change could push an additional 100 million people below the poverty line by 2030. The Pentagon describes climate change as a “threat multiplier” and a “key driver of fragility”. Stanford University research estimates that climate change has increased economic inequality between developed and developing economies by 25% since 1960.

Meanwhile, millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being pushed into food crises by extreme climate events, the frequency of which has doubled since 1990. Indeed, in the short time that we are taking for this debate alone, 354 children will have died of malnutrition. This crisis is being exacerbated by climate change; and of course, as the most reverend Primate highlighted, the climate is having an impact on migration and conflict.

Yet no country is acting with anything like the urgency that the situation demands. Today, we have had an announcement from the Government that has, I am afraid, only underscored the chasm that exists between rhetoric and reality. As I say, in the front-line climate states, there is a growing sense of anger and cynicism as a result. I was recently in South Africa as part of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation, and I was struck by how insulated we are from that sense of anger and injustice, which is felt not just in South Africa but across the continent.

Countries are tired of being told to keep their carbon wealth in the ground by people who got rich off the back of burning theirs and continue to do so, and who refuse to compensate developing economies for keeping theirs in the ground or to help finance the transition to new energy sources. These countries want climate justice, which for them means recognition of loss and damage, and compensation, not just concessionary finance or no finance at all. As Oxfam’s briefing pointed out, while COP 27 achieved a historic breakthrough in establishing a fund for loss and damage, how this is operationalised will be critical.

The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned our membership of the Transitional Committee and how important it is that we play a progressive role in that. However, as a country, we have yet to make a financial commitment for loss and damage, and our climate finance, which was meant to be additional to overseas development assistance, has come entirely from our depleted ODA funding. The UK International Climate Finance Strategy, published today, seems to continue to take this position. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether the £11.6 billion mentioned in the statement is new money or money coming from existing resources?

We need to get real. We need to think much more profoundly about what things such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa mean, and what climate justice means. Certainly, many in South Africa feel that “justice” and “partnership” are far more evident in rhetoric than in reality. For a long time, we have talked as if climate change were something that might happen if we did not sort things out soon. But it is not; it is something that is happening now. The water is literally heating up around us, and the tragedy is that the first victims are those least responsible and most vulnerable. That surely is a morally unsustainable position. As the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, concluded, it is time to stop talking and start acting with the urgency required. Otherwise, humanity faces its greatest calamity.