Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I too express my appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for securing this debate and congratulate my right reverend friend the Bishop of Winchester on his informative and passionate maiden speech.

The UK rightly has a distinguished record in overseas development aid and I look forward to the urgent return to the Government’s manifesto commitment of 0.7% of GDP being spent on it. There also needs to be transparency in new funding announcements about whether the funding is new money or comes from salami-slicing existing programmes. The priorities for climate change aid must be focused on three areas: mitigation, resilience and emergency response. I will look briefly at each in turn.

The first is working both locally and globally to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. There is a myriad of small projects, often led by faith communities, to protect land, restore habitats, nurture soil and plant trees. Faith actors are accessible as they are in every community. They are affordable, due to their existing structures and volunteers, and they are acceptable due to being trusted partners on the ground in local cultures. But they also connect globally, giving a bigger picture and attracting solidarity from faith communities around the world. Welling up inspiration from their faith, they are great advocates for the care of creation.

One such initiative—I declare an interest here as I am much involved in it—is the global Anglican Communion Forest, which seeks to conserve, protect and restore ecosystems across the world. Last year, the Anglican Church in Tanzania planted more than 300,000 trees across 69 villages. The Anglican Church in Kenya planted 2 million trees and is planning to plant 15 million more by 2026. The Anglican Church in Mozambique is involved in restoring mangrove swamps, which both protect coastlines and enhance biodiversity. These small projects inspire people to go further to protect and enhance their environment. Will the Government work more closely with faith communities, which are so often on the front line of the delivery of ecosystem services that absorb carbon as well as on the front line of the adverse impacts of climate change?

Secondly, we need to build resilience to the impact of more extreme weather events caused by climate change. As your Lordships have already heard, last year was the hottest on record and it is no coincidence that floods, cyclones, droughts, et cetera, killed or displaced millions of people. If we do not build resilience, we will see increasing health inequalities, poverty, conflicts and migration, due to the impact of climate change on people’s lives, resources and safety. The UNHCR estimates that 70% of all refugees from conflict come from countries that are highly vulnerable to climate. Aid in this area is money well spent for the future. I express my gratitude to the Government for, on various occasions, providing match-funding opportunities to lever in further faith-based support for the world’s poorest communities.

Finally, we need to respond really well by providing the right emergency aid to affected nations. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned Christian Aid; a new analysis by it said that the 20 costliest extreme climate disasters in 2023 revealed a

“global postcode lottery stacked against the poor”,

where the relative economic impact of disasters varies considerably across countries. In the world’s economically poorest nations, few households have any financial buffer to help them bounce back after a disaster. As well as more deaths in the immediate aftermath, this means that recovery is often slower and more unequal, with many people pushed further into poverty as their assets have been destroyed or damaged.

Part of our moral duty as a nation is to reach out to our global neighbours. Part of this can be seen in the commitment we might make to the loss and damage fund, so will the Minister make its operationalisation an urgent priority? This is the task for our generation in this decade.