Keir Starmer has been accused of “wavering on climate commitments” after the Labour party refused to commit to the £11.6bn climate funding pledge made to the world’s poorest nations.
Aid NGOs have criticised the government and the Labour party after the Guardian revealed that under current plans, meeting the flagship pledge made at Cop26 to protect vulnerable countries against the climate crisis is almost impossible.
Without policy change or extra funding from the Treasury, under current spending plans the commitment to the world’s rainforests and poor nations will not be met. A leaked document revealed by the Guardian earlier this week showed that ministers were being prepared for the policy’s failure.
If Labour wins the next general election, to meet the UK’s climate finance commitment it would have to spend £4.2bn in the 2025-26 spending cycle to meet the commitment that was supposed to be spent over a five-year period. This would amount to 83% of the Foreign Office aid budget, and would mean that humanitarian funding as well as money for Ukraine would have to be cut to meet the budget without policy change.
When approached by the Guardian, spokespeople for the shadow net zero and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the Labour leader all declined to commit to the funding pledge, which is to make up part of a global $100bn (£78.3bn)-a-year fund to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on the world’s poorest people.
Labour had pledged that if elected it would invest £28bn on climate measures each year until 2030, but has since said that it would reach this figure by the middle of its first term in parliament. This spending will be focused domestically, on green energy, housing, and transport. The party also pledged last year that some climate spending would be included in the aid budget.
Sophie Rigg, ActionAid UK’s head of policy and research for climate and humanitarian, said: “With a year to go before a general election, it’s concerning to see both the government and the opposition wavering on their climate commitments. To do so lays bare the government’s failure to act as a global leader and is jeopardising global progress on climate.
“We need our politicians to demonstrate brave leadership on climate change and commit to honouring our £11.6bn pledge with new and additional finance that recognises the severity of the climate crisis. Climate change affects us all, so these are broken promises to the electorate as well as the rest of the world.”
Asad Rehman, director of anti-poverty charity War on Want, urged Labour to commit to the spending, saying: “It is unethical, immoral for politicians to play a dangerous and deadly game of cutting UK debt by cutting spending on climate. For politicians they are simply numbers. For many in the world it’s a question of life or death. It’s even more hypocritical that the UK continues to fuel the [climate and nature] crises by greenlighting more oil and gas, handing out billions in tax breaks even as record global heating devastates people’s lives and the planet.”
Campaigners have pointed out that global spending to mitigate the effects of climate breakdown, including measures such as helping developing countries create renewable energy sources, benefits Britain, too, by protecting everyone worldwide from the worst effects.
James Meadway, a former Treasury official and member of the Progressive Economy Forum, said: “Given that the Office for Budget Responsibility expects UK government debt to reach almost 300% of GDP by end of the century if we don’t take action on climate change, the claim we can reduce debt by cutting climate change spending is just not credible.
“Labour refusing to say they would oppose the cuts shows the same failure to grasp the hard economic facts of climate change.”
Though the government has said it is committed to the £11.6bn, senior civil servants have said it cannot be met without more funding because ministers have underspent the budget to the tune of billions each year.
The Tory peer Zac Goldsmith, who last week quit as a Foreign Office minister over what he termed Rishi Sunak’s “apathy” towards the environment, doubted the prime minister when he said he would meet the £11.6bn figure. He told Channel 4 news: “In effect it is a lie because the maths doesn’t add up. I am not suggesting he is lying but the effect of our policies today, the trajectory of expenditure, is we cannot honour that pledge.”
A government spokesperson responded: “Claims that the international climate finance pledge is being dropped are false. As the prime minister set out at Cop27, the government remains committed to spending £11.6bn on international climate finance and we are delivering on that pledge.
“We spent over £1.4bn on international climate finance over the course of the 2021-22 financial year, supporting developing countries to reduce poverty and respond to the causes and impacts of climate change. We will publish the latest annual figures in due course.”
The Labour party declined to comment.
