Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the IPCC's report entitled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; and whether she plans to take steps to work to reduce the debt owed by countries in the Global South to enable those countries to free up resources to better adapt to climate change.

The UK agrees with the IPCC that global action to adapt to the changing climate has been insufficient. We recognise how urgent and important it is to ensure countries most vulnerable to climate change are able to respond to the risks they face.

We are providing £11 billion of international climate finance over five years, with an extra £1 billion in 2024-2025 if the economy grows as forecast. Recent UK commitments on adaptation include significant support to developing countries, with £274 million to help countries across Asia and the Pacific to build resilience, £143.5 million to support African countries to adapt and almost £50 million to help Small Island Developing States.

The UK has put action on climate change and debt at the top of its international agenda with our COP26 Presidency in 2021/22. We have increased the level of quality climate financing, which means offering financing to countries on terms that are suitable to their economic situation and consistent with their path to a more sustainable debt situation. This includes the provision of grants for countries at highest risk of debt distress.

We are working to ensure that countries get effective and timely debt treatments that put them on a more fiscally sustainable path and allow them to channel future funds to productive investments that are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, including climate change adaptation. In November 2020, the UK, along with the G20 and Paris Club, agreed the Common Framework to help deliver a long-term sustainable approach for supporting lower income countries to tackle their debt vulnerabilities.