“A *burden-sharing Global Britain” (*may exclude climate change)

Who must pay for climate change?

News of the UK government backtracking on its COP26 climate funding commitments sent shockwaves to everyone concerned about climate change.

This week The Guardian reported that “…the government is drawing up plans to drop the UK’s flagship £11.6bn climate and nature funding pledge … with the prime minister accused of betraying populations most vulnerable to global heating”. Most vocal were poorer countries suffering the worst of climate change and unable to bankroll their own adaptation and mitigation while being the least responsible for climate change, a topic I’ve written about in this publication.

In The Guardian article Gabon’s Environment Minister, Lee White, says: “The climate crisis is such that every country has to contribute to the solution. Gabon is 88% covered by tropical rainforest. We have maintained deforestation below 0.1% over 5 decades and net absorb over 100m tonnes of CO2 (i.e., carbon dioxide) annually. Few countries are doing more for the planet. Developed nations, particularly the UK, which was at the origin of the Industrial Revolution, have to do the heavy lifting – but all too often they make false promises and fail to provide true leadership or even honour their modest financial commitments”.

Lee White’s statement reflects an unpopular view about social justice and who should pay in the climate crisis. In the book Fairness in Adaptation by Neil Adger and colleagues, they outline the bases of the argument made by Lee White and give perspective to reflect on actions such as the latest by the UK government. At the heart of the issue, as Adger and colleagues put it, is that since the Marrakech Accords in 2001 recommendations to assist vulnerable developing countries in adapting to climate change and meeting the cost of adaptation have been poorly implemented and gaps remained. These included the convention refusing to address the issue of responsibility for climate impacts and its failure to establish a burden-sharing scheme to ensure predictable funding for adaptation from richer to poorer countries.

That said, there’s a moral and policy basis to expect the UK to play its part in funding adaptation, not least for its role rallying COP agreements but for its own positioning as a ‘burden-sharing Global Britain committed to protecting human rights and upholding global norms’. It’s a powerful statement of international relations policy hence the shock by poorer countries at how it fails when needed most. Ofcourse the UK has every right to prioritise its spending however it sees fit, but the question isn’t about calling for less elsewhere in favour of global climate change spending. It’s about the consistent backtracking on international development obligations since Brexit and the assumption of a ‘we have our own problems to deal with’ position by the UK. It may be an inconvenient to hear this but the problems of the developing world and Britain’s role in them are infact a part of Britain’s problems to deal with.

It’s simply unacceptable for a country that unquestionably benefited from the Industrial Revolution and the underdevelopment of poorer countries that followed, to backtrack its obligations to help those countries respond to the climate crisis. Climate change is the biggest and most dangerous burden we all share. Shutting your eyes and folding your arms won’t make it go away. It’s certainly not very ‘global’ behaviour.