Global Britain: Human Rights and Climate Change

Chris Law Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and I thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this hugely important debate.

Let me begin by saying one thing about which there is no doubt—we are living through and experiencing the beginning of a climate emergency. The effects of global climate change, which scientists have predicted for the past three decades and more, are happening now. July was the hottest month on record and across the world we witnessed extreme weather events: deadly wildfires spread across Europe and north America, and devastating flooding caused chaos in Germany and China. Those are but a few examples.

Last month’s IPCC report was damning, with the UN Secretary General António Guterres describing the situation as

“code red for humanity”.

If emissions continue at their current rate, global temperatures will rise more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. There is still time to stop that from happening, but emissions must be cut dramatically by the end of this decade and not a moment later. As we approach COP26 in November, the UK Government must lead from the front, ensuring that new and ambitious targets are agreed on to avert this unfolding climate disaster.

Sustainable development goal 13 calls for

“urgent action to combat climate change”.

Without that, the devastating consequences of climate change will undo hard-won development gains. Let there be no doubt: the poor and the wealthy are not affected equally by climate change, and that is true of nations as well as individuals. The cruel reality is that despite the world’s poorest and most vulnerable contributing the least to climate change, they are most at risk from its negative effects and the least equipped to withstand and adapt to it.

Oxfam has calculated that the richest 10% of the world’s population were responsible for more than half of the cumulative emissions between 1990 and 2015. The wealthiest 1% were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much CO₂ as the poorer half of the world combined, which is something for all of us to consider and reflect upon.

The climate crisis disproportionately affects individuals and groups who are already marginalised as a result of structural inequalities. The World Bank has predicted that climate change will push over 130 million people into poverty in the next 10 years. Additionally, the World Health Organisation predicts that climate change will cause a quarter of a million additional deaths a year through malaria, malnutrition, diarrhoea and heat stress.

Climate change fundamentally impacts human rights—the right to life, to food, to water and sanitation, to health and to housing, among many others. It exacerbates inequalities between the poor and the wealthy, between ethnicities, between genders and between generations. Climate change is a human rights crisis.

We know that the G20 countries are responsible for almost 80% of global annual emissions. Net zero emission targets by 2050 are, frankly, too little, too late. Wealthier countries must take the lead by decarbonising more quickly. Before, during and after COP26, a human rights-focused approach is essential to tackle the climate crisis and to secure a just transition.

Sadly, at a time when we need international co-operation to tackle climate change, those who lead us in the UK Government espouse an empty slogan of “global Britain” that goes against just that. As warned, the decision to slash the aid budget is fundamentally undermining the UK’s efforts to show any leadership in tackling international climate change. For example, in May the COP26 President visited Indonesia and called on others to move forward with plans to reach net zero. Yet just weeks later, the same UK Government cancelled a highly effective green growth programme that was designed to prevent deforestation in Indonesia. Similarly, in Malawi the Promoting Sustainable Partnerships for Empowered Resilience, or PROSPER, project, which focuses on training farmers in climate-smart and adaptive agricultural practices, has been cancelled by this Tory Government, halfway through its implementation. That not only breaks trust with those communities but sends a message to those countries yet to determine their contribution to the Paris agreement that the host of COP26 does not take its obligations on climate change seriously. Frankly, it does not care.

Global Britain, if it is to mean anything, should be about listening to and supporting these marginalised communities in tackling this climate emergency, and not about cutting their funding and shutting them out. Tragically, with just over 50 days until COP26, those communities will not have their voices heard, as vaccine inequity means they cannot attend, and once again decisions will be made for them, rather than with them, a further indication that so-called global Britain is, under the Tories, nothing but a poor and nasty little Britain.

Finally, in the last Westminster Hall debate that I attended in person, I called on the UK Government to follow the Scottish Government’s lead in placing human rights at the centre of their climate justice fund response and to establish a climate justice fund. Since then, the Scottish Government have doubled their world-leading fund to £24 million over four years, in stark contrast to the UK Government, I would like to hear from the Minister today whether he is willing to initiate such a fund now.