UK must take 'moral lead' on climate aid, say MPs

The international development committee urges UK government to find new funds for poor countries to adapt to severe storms, floods and droughts

John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 3 June 2009 00.05 BST

Britain must urgently help poor countries tackle climate change or the gains made by years of development aid could be wiped out, according to a group of MPs examining Britain's assistance to developing countries.
The report of the parliamentary international development committee urges the government to take a moral lead and find new money for poor countries to adapt to the severe storms, floods and droughts that are already being seen around the world and are impacting most on the poor.
"This money should not come out of existing aid commitments which are already under pressure in the current economic downturn," said chair of the committee, Malcolm Bruce MP.
"Substantial funding will be needed. This must be additional to pledges already made for development assistance because developing countries are not responsible for the emissions which have caused climate change and the estimated costs cannot be met from existing development assistance or national budgets," said the report.
The MPs backed plans for a small international levy on all international flights and proposed that the UK consider paying to offset the carbon emitted by aeroplanes importing fruit and vegetables grown in poor countries like Kenya.
But the MPs strongly criticise the Department for International Development (DfID), saying that it could provide little evidence of progress made in the past seven years towards integrating climate change into its poverty alleviation programmes, especially in Africa.
The MPs acknowledged that DfID had a major programme in Bangladesh to combine climate change and poverty reduction but said that this appeared to be a one-off project. "We believe that such initiatives should become the norm," it said.
But the MPs, who travelled to East Africa to collect evidence, urged Britain to support poor countries like Kenya which grow large amounts of food and flowers for the UK market. "There is a danger that steps taken by consumers in the UK to reduce their contribution to carbon emissions may lead them to avoid buying produce from developing countries in the belief that air-freighted food and flowers necessarily have a higher carbon footprint. This is not true. The CO2 emissions from Kenyan flowers flown to the UK are nearly six times lower than those from Dutch flowers grown in heated greenhouses".
The MPs found that the government had made only limited progress in ensuring that climate change informed all policy decisions. "It should be central to the DfID's work. It now needs to move on to establish comprehensive climate change programmes", said the report.
So far DfID has pledged an extra £100m into research on climate change over the next five years; and £400m for World Bank funds.
A DfiD spokesman said: "We know that climate change and natural resources need to be central in our work to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development in both the short and long term. DfiD remains committed to further mainstreaming climate change across our country programmes and climate change will be a key theme of the forthcoming white paper."