Climate fund 'recycled' from existing aid budget, UK government admits

Move appears to contradict repeated government pledges that climate aid would be additional to existing aid programmes

David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 18.00 GMT
A £1.5bn pledge by Gordon Brown to help poor countries cope with the ravages of climate change will drain funds from existing overseas aid programmes to improve health, education and water supplies, the government admitted today.
The move, revealed in an email exchange between campaigners and an official at the Department for International Development (DfiD), appears to undermine repeated government pledges that such climate aid should be additional to existing overseas development aid (ODA).
Tim Jones, policy officer at the World Development Movement (WDM), said: "The UK government has publicly said 90% of money for tackling climate change should be additional to existing aid commitments. In private, all of the UK's climate change money is being diverted from international aid. The UK has a moral responsibility to put new money into tackling both development and climate change."
The prime minister announced the £1.5bn "fast start" finance in December, in an attempt to kick-start negotiations at the faltering UN climate talks in Copenhagen. At the time, Brown said it was "to help developing countries adapt to climate change, use clean technology and protect forests".
The UK money was part of a £6.5bn package to be paid by EU countries from 2010 to 2012.
Faced with questions about whether climate finance agreed in Copenhagen would be additional to ODA, British officials said the UK position was that it should be, and that it was lobbying European countries along those lines.
In June last year, Brown said: "The British government recognises that finance to tackle climate change cannot simply be part of official development assistance. Assistance for climate change should not be allowed to divert money from the pledges we have already made to the poorest."
In October, Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, said: "Failure to reach agreement on the principle of additional finance could mean that money will be diverted away from the world's poorest people, while the gains we have made towards the Millennium Development Goals could be reversed."
In the new email exchange between the WDM and the DfiD official, seen by the Guardian, Jones asked for clarification on whether the £1.5bn announced by Brown in Copenhagen in December would be additional, or "will count as ODA, and be included in UK ODA targets?".
The official replied: "The fast start financing will count as ODA." They also confirmed that at least half of the promised £1.5bn had already been announced by ministers, some as long ago as 2007. Brown's pledge "includes some already existing commitments," the official confirmed. It would be spent in countries that have "demonstrated a commitment towards tackling climate change".
Jones said: "Over half of the money announced by the UK in Copenhagen had already been announced, allocated or spent. At least one-third of it will be loans, increasing unfair debts channelled through the undemocratic and mistrusted World Bank."
DfiD spokesman said: "Whilst we do not comment on leaked emails, we have never suggested that our £1.5bn commitment to fast start funding is additional to ODA. Fast start finance was always intended to be part of ODA. The prime minister said in his statement at Copenhagen that from 2013 the UK will provide additional climate finance over and above our 0.7% ODA commitment. Fast start funding comes before, not after, 2013."