7Conclusion
172.The UK Government has, in several respects, been setting an example and playing a global leadership role in spending aid to combat climate change. Through International Climate Finance (ICF) the UK has been seeking to address both the causes and impacts of climate change, including in some of the world’s least developed countries. The UK Government made a commitment to spending 50% of its international climate finance on adaptation. It has delivered on this commitment and that is commendable, both on its own merits and for the example that it sets to other donors. Overall, the UK’s aid spending to combat climate change would be more laudable if it were not for the magnitude of the climate change crisis. What the UK is lacking in its approach, is a fully absorbed recognition of the scale and urgency of the climate challenges that the world is facing.
173.This is reflected in the lack of up to date strategy for spending international climate finance; in the failure to fully integrate climate change into aid strategies beyond the ICF; in the continued ODA support for fossil fuels without apparent, comprehensive strategies in place for transitioning beyond these forms of energy; and in the lack of coherence on climate change across government policy, demonstrated by the support of UK Export Finance for fossil fuel economies in developing countries.
174.As the primary ODA spending department, DFID should be leading the way, demonstrating the kind of approach that is required in all aid spending, but it is hamstrung by its decision to utilise the international climate finance budget for mainstreaming climate change across its portfolio. This means that DFID is simultaneously failing to set an example to other aid spending departments on how climate change should be mainstreamed regardless of access to the climate finance budget, whilst also preventing the ICF budget from being used in pursuit of more strategic, transformative outcomes.
175.Meanwhile, BEIS and Defra are spending aid as climate finance without being able to demonstrate how this directly links to poverty reduction. Our evidence showed that while some strategies for mitigation and adaptation can be in tension with strategies for poverty reduction, and vice versa, climate action is most effective when it simultaneously addresses the root causes of poverty and vulnerability. This indicates that managing trade-offs and promoting synergies with poverty reduction is vital for the effectiveness of climate finance, and so tracking and demonstrating the links between the two is paramount.
176.Across Government, we would like to see a more comprehensive, integrated, strategic approach to addressing climate change, based on the latest climate science. This will both enable ICF spending to have as much impact as possible, and will prevent it from being undermined by other aid and non-aid spending. In addition to producing an up to date strategy for spending ICF, we urge the Government to:
- Integrate mitigation and adaptation strategies, together with strategies for poverty reduction and meeting the needs of the most vulnerable. This should be achieved through a more explicit adoption of ‘climate compatible development’ and ‘climate justice’ as guiding principles in aid spending. It should be reinforced by deeper collaboration and sharing of expertise across ICF spending departments.
- Embed climate considerations into all aid strategies and all aid spending, both within and beyond DFID, including, for example, DFID’s Economic Development Strategy, and investments by the Prosperity Fund. In support of this, the UK should adopt the model of the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014 for climate change.
- Integrate plans to transition away from fossil fuels into both ODA and non-ODA fossil fuel investments and, in this way, build coherence between the aid spending that is seeking to address climate change, and non-aid spending, which—in the case of some UK Export Finance investments—currently threatens to undermine it.
177.On the international stage, the UK has an opportunity to build on its reputation for leadership on climate action, particularly in support of the least developed countries, by actively engaging in and progressing difficult conversations around the challenges of loss and damage and the future impacts of climate change on migration. Failing to engage on these issues will not prevent them from having an impact. The best and most productive way to identify workable solutions is through conversations between developed and developing countries, in partnership.
Published: 8 May 2018