Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, my contribution to this debate will start with tributes to three people. First, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, not just for securing a much-needed discussion of Britain’s contribution to development aid but for her untiring and effective work as a Minister in the coalition Government and in opposition. Secondly, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for her principled resignation in protest against the misguided decision to reduce our aid. Thirdly, I pay tribute to the Minister for Development, Andrew Mitchell, for having set out in last November’s White Paper the first reasonably coherent and consistent framework for our aid since the ill-advised upheaval caused by the amalgamation of DfID and the FCO.

Useful though that White Paper was, it lacked one essential element: adequate resourcing to face the worldwide challenges of climate change, pandemic disease, malnutrition, educational shortcomings and war and violent upheavals. The Government say that they will return those resources to 0.7% as soon as our circumstances permit, but what about the circumstances of the developing countries, recipients of aid, which have been just as adversely affected by the Covid pandemic, the cost of living rises and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? The Government’s assurance has already been repeated several times and a cynic would say that it is all set for serial repetition in the years ahead. It has no credibility. Better, surely, if it is unrealistic—I accept that it is—to revert immediately to the full 0.7%, at least to set out on the path towards it, even if only modestly at first. The opportunity for that is the Budget on 6 March. I urge that it be taken.

How best to link global action against climate change to the situation of developing countries, many of which, let us recall, have contributed little or nothing to the climate crisis we all face? Obviously, we and other donor countries need to make a better job of fulfilling the commitment on aid we have collectively entered into at successive COP meetings, most recently in the UAE. What plans do the Government have to do that? We need to ensure that this increase does not come at the expense of other priorities of the developing country recipients, thus robbing Peter to pay Paul and expecting the global South to accept our priorities over theirs.

The prospect of a substantial number of developing countries, many of them in Africa, requiring urgent debt restructuring, including in some cases outright debt forgiveness, is already in sight. No doubt, as before, many donor countries will argue, short-sightedly in my view, against debt forgiveness. Would it not be better if we were to campaign to link such debt forgiveness to specific recipient country commitments on climate change expenditure? Would that not be a good deal for both? What is the Minister’s response to that sort of approach?

Since 2024 is going to be an election year, I have one final thought. Any change of government that might result will inevitably bring to the fore once again the issue of the government structures for handling our overseas aid. I have myself consistently spoken out against the last set of decisions, which led to the creation of the FCDO. It is not a question of one solution being clearly the right solution and the other being the wrong one; it is the damage caused by the Whitehall turf-fighting and the chaos of departmental reorganisations which make these successive zig-zags so damaging and undesirable. An incoming Government could perhaps give a higher priority to development aid issues other than that one, and in particular to those being highlighted in this debate.