COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, with which I wholeheartedly agree. I particularly agree that if we look at the covid pandemic as an example of international co-operation, it does not augur well. If we cannot properly share technology and vaccines even when our own wellbeing depends so directly on that, it does not augur well for the climate crisis. We absolutely need the kind of technology transfer to which he refers.

Let me say a few words about the Government’s own track record, because we are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, let alone the sixth carbon budget, which is the first to be based on net zero by 2050, rather than the older 80% reduction. Just last month, Green Alliance calculated that the Government policies announced since 2020 will cut emissions by just 24% by 2032, and that the policies out for consultation, even if enacted, would still fall far short of the fifth carbon budget. This week’s publications of the net zero strategy and the heat and building strategy lack ambition. They lack urgency and—crucially—they lack the serious funding we need. As a result they still do not do enough to get us back on track. Time is running out in the race for our future, and the Government are barely over the starting line.

Not only are the Government not doing enough of the right things, but they are actively doing too many wrong things. Consider some of the most egregious examples on the charge sheet: a £27 billion road building scheme; the expansion of airports; scrapping the green homes grant just six months after it was introduced; stripping climate change clauses out of trade deals; and an obligation still in statute to maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum. Perhaps most egregious of all, we are pressing ahead with Cambo, a new oilfield off Shetland. No wonder the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the Government continue to

“blunder into high carbon choices”.

Leading by example on climate and nature matters, not just here at home, but because globally the first rule of diplomacy is to walk your talk. Perhaps it is not surprising that, despite what I am sure have been the best efforts of the COP26 President-designate, the Government have so far failed to persuade many other countries to come forward with climate targets aligned to 1.5°C. Indeed, Gambia is currently the only country whose climate pledge is compatible with 1.5°C. Based on the UN’s assessment of the nationally determined contributions submitted so far, the world is on track for warming of around 2.7°C. That cannot be allowed to happen. Shamefully, almost 90 countries responsible for more than 40% of global emissions, including China and India, failed to meet the UN deadline at the end of July to submit new pledges ahead of the Glasgow meeting. What more will the Government do to galvanise more ambitious action to keep 1.5°C alive? What is the President’s plan post-COP26 if the world’s collective pledges are not compatible with 1.5°C?

The Government’s second goal for COP26 is to adapt to protect communities and natural habitats. Globally, Ministers need to lead efforts for a new post-2025 public finance goal, specifically for adaptation, and ensure that other countries and the multilateral development banks follow the UK’s commitment to ringfence 50% of climate finance for adaptation. We need a scaling up of locally led adaptation and support that is accessible and responsive to the needs of marginalised groups. We also need ambitious and rigorous ecosystem protection and restoration incorporated into the enhanced nationally determined contributions and adaptation plans of all countries. Nature, with its vast ability to store carbon and cushion us from shocks such as flooding, is our biggest ally in the fight against climate breakdown. It is therefore shocking that just weeks before the start of COP26, more than 100 fires have been reported on England’s peatlands. They are a vital carbon store, and it is environmental vandalism to set fire to them right now. The climate and nature emergencies are two sides of the same coin, and they need to be addressed together with far greater co-ordination.

Let me move to the third goal of mobilising finance. The COP26 President has stated that delivering the 10-year finance pledge is a matter of trust. Yes it is, but when that pledge has not been delivered anything like in full, trust is at breaking point. Any leverage that the UK might have had in persuading others to step up has been carelessly thrown away by its becoming the only G7 country to cut overseas aid in the midst of a pandemic. That unforgiveable decision means that climate programmes are being slashed, leaving some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries bearing the brunt. For example, aid to Bangladesh has been cut by more than £100 million. It is not too late to change direction, restore the official development assistance budget, ensure that climate finance is genuinely new and additional, and increase our commitment so that we are providing our fair share.

We must also act on loss and damage—a subject far too long consigned to the margins of negotiations. I welcome the UK presidency’s more constructive approach to that issue, including making progress on operationalising the so-called Santiago Network, but we need to do more. We must facilitate a process to scale up dedicated finance specifically for loss and damage, and we must acknowledge that as the third pillar of climate action, on a par with mitigation and adaptation. We must ensure that it has its own dedicated space on every COP agenda, and take forward calls for a specific loss and damage champion. It is long past time for the more wealthy countries to put aside their concerns about liability and compensation, and instead to come from a place of solidarity and human rights, in order to make meaningful progress on loss and damage and delivering new finance. As the young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has said:

“Our leaders are lost and our planet is damaged…You cannot adapt to lost cultures, you cannot adapt to lost traditions, you cannot adapt to lost history, you cannot adapt to starvation. You cannot adapt to extinction.”

The climate crisis is pushing many communities beyond their ability to adapt.

The fourth goal of the COP26 presidency is to work together to deliver. No one would argue with that, but I go back to the context in which these talks are being held. The summit is taking place while the pandemic continues to rage in many of the poorest countries, as a direct result of vaccine apartheid. Only around 2% of the populations of low-income countries have received even one dose of the vaccine, and of the 554 million doses promised by the richest nations, just 16% have so far reached their destination. That failure is morally obscene, as well as running entirely counter to our own self-interest. If COP26 is to succeed, the concerns and justified anger of countries in the global south urgently need to be addressed. That means providing enough finance and vaccines to match the need, waiving intellectual property rights, and transferring technical capacity and expertise.

Glasgow is not only crucial for delivering climate ambition and finance in line with the Paris agreement; it is also a litmus test for safer, fairer, more inclusive forms of economic restructuring and global governance. It is a chance urgently to shift to an economic system that values the long-term wellbeing of people and planet above the endless growth that, in the words of the OECD, has generated “significant harms” over recent decades. When the climate crisis is caused by our extractive, exploitative economic model, we cannot expect to win the chance for a better future by re-running a race that we see we will ultimately lose, and that everyone else will lose as well.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene before she winds up her speech, and I am pleased that she secured the support of the Backbench Business Committee to hold this important debate ahead of COP26, which starts in under two weeks. She has spoken powerfully, and in the light of what she has said, does she agree that the UK is showing leadership in, for example, including international aviation and maritime emissions in our sixth carbon budget—we are the first and, so far, only country prepared to do that? She has called on this country to do that for some time, so will she at least welcome it?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee for his intervention. I welcome the fact that aviation and shipping will be brought into our climate budgets but, as always, the devil will be in the detail. I have great concern that some will try to find ways of assuming that technology can get us out of this hole as well. I suggest that it cannot, and that we need proposals such as those made by the citizens Climate Assembly on a frequent flier levy. I think we need to change behaviour, rather than think that technology will get us out of the hole, but I look forward to seeing the Government’s plans. [Interruption.] I am winding up, Madam Deputy Speaker—I have less than four minutes. You will be pleased to know I have a page to go, and I am rattling through it.

To conclude, if the UK Government are to rise to the challenge of being president of the most important global summit in a generation, and if we are to keep 1.5° alive, we need a justice reset to be at the heart of all four of the Government’s objectives. Will the Minister therefore say what more will be done to ensure that countries such as China, Russia and Brazil step up, and to demonstrate more ambitious leadership at home? Will she urge her colleagues in the Government to reverse the aid cut and step up with new funds for loss and damage, and will she propose a revision to our own domestic emissions reduction target based on that new understanding of what constitutes our fair share of the global climate budget?

I am championing in Parliament the new climate and ecological emergency Bill, which sets out a legal framework to do just that. It is backed by more than 115 MPs and many councils, businesses and organisations, and I commend it to the Minister. This is our last chance—our best chance. The young people who are striking for the climate and for a safer world know that. The workers who are demanding a just transition know that. The businesses that are, frankly, far outstripping Governments when it comes to climate targets and actions know that. It is time for the Government to recognise that we can all win, and that to successfully rise to the challenges facing us all—to seize this chance—is perfectly possible with the political will. If we do not do it, we will never be forgiven by history.