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 on Sub-Saharan Africa of the second part of the UN IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, entitled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, published on 27 February 2022.

The UK agrees with the IPCC that global action to adapt to the changing climate has been insufficient and recognises how urgent and important it is to ensure countries most vulnerable to climate change, including those in Sub-Saharan Africa, are able to respond to the risks they face.

At COP26 the UK committed £143.5 million to support African countries to adapt to the impact of extreme weather and changing climate. These include, amongst others, the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme to support African countries in designing and implementing transformational adaptation of their economies, supporting resilient water resources management through the Africa Regional Climate and Nature Programme, and the Climate Adaptation and Resilience research programme to inform development in a changing climate in Africa. This is in addition to the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use agreed at COP26, aiming to end deforestation by 2030 in Africa, supported by the Congo Basin Pledge, where 11 other donors in committing $1.5 billion for the protection of the Congo Basin Forests and the land-mark $8.5 billion deal to support South Africa's just energy transition from coal with the UK, France, Germany, the US and the European Union - the first of its kind worldwide.

This also includes £19.5 million for the Shock Response Programme in the Sahel, working with the World Bank to strengthen government social protection systems in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, and support to the Centre for Disaster Protection to improve use of early warning systems and disaster risk financing. More recently we have completed a series of reports in partnership with the Met Office and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) to assess climate risks across regions in Sub-Saharan Africa to help embed consideration of climate risks across our work.