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As Britain leaves Europe, its plan must include adaptation, finance, and technology transfer for poorer nations - not just emissions cuts
Katherine Kramer leads Christian Aid’s climate policy.
One of the outcomes of Brexit is that the UK’s contribution to the Paris Agreement will no longer be included along with EU nations but will now have to be set out individually.
As a rich G7 country and one with a high historical responsibility for contributing to causing the climate crisis, the UK would, under any circumstances, be in the global spotlight.
However, this year, the UK will be looked at with international laser-focused intensity, as it will hold the presidency of ‘COP26’, the next round of UN climate talks, scheduled for November 2021. This means it is responsible for brokering ambitious global action to cut emissions and adapt to already-occurring climate impacts.
In the coming days, the government will submit its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the UNFCCC. If it fails to lead from the front through its own domestic action, it will lack credibility when calling on others to also do enough to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals.
Firstly, the UK needs to set a 2030 emission reduction target that not only puts it on track to meet its 2050 net zero emissions legislation, but that frontloads transformative action in the next decade.
The unique opportunity of the massive COVID-19 economic recovery packages means the UK can do more than it ever thought it might, to avoid locking in unsustainable infrastructure and to accelerate the energy transition away from all fossil fuels.
In terms of the top line figure for the NDC, an emissions reduction of at least 75% (against 1990 levels) has been mooted. This should represent a bare minimum, in the context of the billions of pounds that will be mobilised to stimulate the economy in response to COVID-19 and their potential to foster transformative change.
Secondly, and extremely importantly, the UK has moral and legal obligations towards poorer countries to support their climate efforts.
A 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that “Poverty and disadvantage are expected to increase in some populations as global warming increases; limiting global warming to 1.5C, compared with 2C, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050”.
Even the most proactive efforts to reduce emissions will not erase vulnerability to climate harms so countries dealing with these impacts need climate finance to help them protect themselves. These poorer countries need to know the scale of the resources that they will be able to access to allow them to plan and implement their own contributions towards the global climate effort.
Sadly though it looks like this first UK climate plan will need to be updated as soon as early 2021 because it seems the UK is going to limit its announcement on December 12 to just emissions reductions.
The mandate for Paris pledges also includes the need to pledge action on adaptation, finance, and technology transfer for poorer nations; not just emissions reductions.
We have already seen the UK’s leadership on the global stage being damaged as a result of its recent decision to reduce aid spending to just 0.5% of national income, down from the existing target of 0.7%. So this gap in the climate plan must be remedied if the UK wants to be a credible host of COP26.
Having the Paris pledges reflect all climate action and not just emissions reductions, was a hard-fought win by poorer countries in the UN climate talks. Not fulfilling this mandate in its own pledge would show UK tone-deafness to these wider climate concerns. And it would negatively impact its diplomatic outreach with poorer countries, who tend to be the ones who drive ambition in the UN talks and on whom the UK will rely to ensure their own Glasgow summit is a success.
