That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s international development work to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and prevent biodiversity loss.
My Lords, it is an honour for me to introduce this debate today, originally tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord McInnes, who sadly cannot be here.
My Twitter bio includes:
“Hates waste of all kinds”,
and for me the topic we are discussing very much falls into the waste category. As an original founder of the Conservative Friends of International Development, I am proud of the work it does and, in particular, of the 600-plus volunteers who have participated in social action projects over the past 11 years in Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and most recently last month in Bangladesh. These are all countries where the impact of climate change degradation of the environment is visibly changing people’s lives. The projects—in Bangladesh this year much of the work was focused on plastic pollution—are examples where individuals working at a local level can help those communities and contribute towards the SDGs.
Of course education is key, but so is placing a higher value on natural resources and biodiversity, making it worth more to preserve them than to destroy. This is not always an easy case to make to families living in poverty, where day-to-day survival needs trump long-term environmental impact. I am sure my noble friend agrees that volunteering and participation in projects of these kinds helps us to understand a bit more about the complex issues around the SDGs, as those we try to support gain from shared time and experience.
The situation for our planet is deeply concerning. Public concern is rising, and I welcome that, as I do increased government commitment. Thank heavens for Sir David Attenborough and the brilliant “Blue Planet” and “Our Planet” series, which have inspired and motivated so many. The reaction to the recent forest fires, climate strikes and, of course, Extinction Rebellion are part of that.
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world. Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about two-thirds of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions, and we have all been slow to wake up to the implications. The most comprehensive assessment yet of the state of nature around the world was published last year, confirming that 1 million species are on the brink of extinction. Scientists have warned that even a 1.5-degree rise in temperatures would be devastating for humanity, ecosystems and the natural world as a whole. However, without significant action and intervention we are heading towards an unsustainable 3-degree rise.
It is the poorest in the world who will feel these consequences first. The European Commission report Life, Lives, Livelihoods found that 70% of the world’s poor live in rural areas and depend directly on biological diversity for their livelihoods. So the problem is not going away—it is accelerating.
4:07 pm
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin. She is of course no newcomer to this subject—she has shown a consistent commitment to and interest in it, with a determination to see progress, and I commend her for that. She will forgive me if I say that I wish she were in the driving seat of the Conservative Party and that I had the same feeling about the Conservative Party as a whole.
It is certainly true that at the UN General Assembly in 2019 the Prime Minister undertook to double the UK’s spend on international climate finance. On the other hand, a little earlier in the year the House of Commons International Development Committee report, while acknowledging UK leadership in advancing climate change and sustainable development agendas, said that,
“there does not appear to be an active strategy underpinning the Government’s international Climate Finance spending”.
It is terribly important that we see evidence of that strategy, and a general election is a very good time to hear more about it.
The UN climate change conference in Glasgow will be coming up in 2020. Whichever Government are in power, it will be very sad if the Prime Minister’s statements are not underpinned by a really effective strategy to combat climate change, and that strategy has to encompass all departments and be central to all their work. There must be an inner conviction that this is an overwhelming challenge for humanity—a challenge that threatens humanity in the long run if not in the short term. For that reason, effective co-ordination of government policy is needed across all aspects. There is no evidence of this at the moment. Even today, we read that the Government have approved a new coal mine—the noble Baroness looks surprised but it is true —for coking coal in Cumbria. It is difficult to understand how that can be reconciled with an overriding commitment and strategy.
I should say that my interests are as in the register; indeed, my work in this sphere goes back very many years and I had the privilege for a while of being Overseas Development Minister.
If we are to be effective in combating climate change, trade deals are crucial. How are we ensuring that the necessary measures and commitments are written into trade deals to make sure that we are all on course? Multilateralism is crucial. We cannot possibly deal effectively with the issues of climate change on the basis of insular nationality. We have to recognise that if any sphere demands international co-operation it is this one. I would like the Government to convince me how they intend to make good the loss of co-operation which will follow Brexit. How will we get effective measures in place to enable the international community to work together in furthering the objectives?
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for introducing this debate and giving us the opportunity to address an issue relevant to the general election, as has been said, but much more so to the very pressing, urgent case of the future of our planet. The House will know of my long-standing interest in international development, both as chair of the International Development Committee in the House of Commons for 10 years and through my continuing connections with the sector, which are noted in the register of interests.
Many of us have been campaigning on climate change for many years. The Liberal Democrats are particularly proud of our record during the coalition Government and, frankly, disappointed that much of what we achieved in that coalition has been set back and dismantled by the Conservatives since. However, as has been mentioned, the advent of Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and the pupil strikes has forced the issue right up the international agenda. I am not sure how Greta Thunberg will find a zero-carbon way to Madrid, but I hope she succeeds. It is absolutely right that we should focus on how climate change is applied right across our international development agenda, because the challenges are immense. However, I have a few cautions in that connection.
First, I acknowledge that climate change features quite directly in government policy, both in the general programmes, and through international climate finance and our support for international climate funds. That is of course welcome, but as has been said by the IDC, there is concern about a lack of coherent strategy and effective cross-departmental co-ordination, which has been weakened under the Government. The IDC asked the Government to revisit this but, sadly, I saw from their reply that they declined to do so.
Another point is that real concern has been expressed about the danger of relabelling, which is simply redefining aid spending that was going to happen anyway and calling it climate change targeted. That is simply unacceptable. Bond has suggested that direct spending from the aid budget should be limited to 10% of the total budget. Others have said that, because this is a new global crisis that was not relevant and taken on board when we set our development objectives, we have to find new money for a new crisis, not raid the existing budget, which is focused on poverty.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie. Unlike him, I cannot claim to be an expert in these matters but I am an ornithologist in my spare time. I care deeply about natural resources and the benefits of biodiversity, so I greatly welcome this debate. One does not have to travel very far to see and appreciate how much biodiversity matters, and how urgent the need is to preserve it. Although my main interest is in birds, it is no secret that they do not live in a world of their own. They depend on the environment around them for food and shelter, as I can see every day when I am in the hills of east Perthshire at Craighead. Especially, almost all of them depend on trees. Above us is a large forest which was planted about 40 years ago, almost all of it a monoculture of Sitka spruce. It provides shelter for roe and red deer, and foxes; little else seems to live there. But around our cottage the deciduous trees, some old and some new, are full of insects and bird life.
We have a mixture of residents and many visitors that come into our trees from the surrounding grazing land and elsewhere. We have brought new species on to our property by planting trees to increase our biodiversity, which we see when our local crossbills bring their young—with as-yet uncrossed bills—to nibble the buds of our ash trees in early springtime. At home in Edinburgh my wife, who organises these things, decided three years ago that we should stop cutting our grass every two weeks to keep it short and trim, and turn our lawn instead into a meadow. As a result, we now have rich insect life there too, as well as a variety of flowers that attract them. What she has done is part of a very welcome appreciation of the value of meadows up and down the country here in the UK.
What we do here is far from perfect but what a contrast it is to what is happening in far too many countries overseas. I have two images that stick in my mind and two points to raise with the Minister. One concerns Malaysia. A few years ago, I was taken by car from Kuala Lumpur to the international airport some 20 miles away. For much of the journey on either side were plantation upon plantation of palms, which had been planted for the production of palm oil. It was a depressing sight. They were laid out in vast, orderly, regimented rows stretching as far as the eye could see into the distance. I thought of what had been cleared away to make room for them and the huge loss of wildlife that must have resulted. It was the relentless industrial scale of what had been done that was so appalling. If there is a lesson here for all of us, it is that monoculture plantations cannot ever be a substitute for the mature, biodiverse forests that they replace. Protection of what remains of those forests around the world must be a priority.
4:39 pm
The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
My Lords, I too welcome this debate and the Prime Minister’s commitment to increased spending in this area. I also take note of, and agree with, the slight fear and concern of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that some of the money for this important work will be taken out of what ought to be spent on the relief of poverty and direct aid.
Three weeks ago I was in Israel, leading a pilgrimage looking at many of the sites mentioned in the Bible. One thing I came across that I had not seen there before but which was pointed out to me by various people was the fallow field—fields kept idle for a year to let the earth rest. I learned in geography lessons in my state county primary school around 1960 or 1961 that it was an important principle not only to rotate crops but to let the earth rest—in other words, not to squeeze everything out of it. I later discovered that this is part of the biblical teaching about the sabbath: not just that people and animals are to rest but that the earth also needs rest and recreation. That is why some farmers in Israel still practise that principle.
Fallow fields and crop rotation used to be the norm in this country, letting the earth rest and be refreshed. Some of that is coming back, despite the intensive farming we have learned in recent decades. Much of that farming has been very useful and important, helping to feed our country and other countries. I do not question scientific method or all the scientific resources we can find being brought to bear on farming. It is right and proper, but not if we lose the basic principle that the earth, like its inhabitants, needs time to rest and recover when it has been used. Otherwise it will be abused.
Caring for the earth is part of the Church’s mission. It is one of the five marks of mission enunciated and taught by the worldwide Anglican communion. This principle predates concerns about global warming, though it is part of addressing them. It is about our belief that we should be stewards of this planet: for God, for creation and for future generations. We are called to be gentle with the earth, kind to it in the same way that we are called to be kind and gentle with one another. Yes, we need to make the earth as productive as it can be to feed people and for various other reasons—that is fine; but productive while still being healthy and self-sustaining. It is a basic principle that lies behind much else that has been discussed today.
For my final point—I do not wish to speak at great length—I acknowledge the help of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham, who would like to have been here today but could not. He knows Rwanda very well. He told me of a north Rwandan village community project: collecting cow dung into an enclosed slurry pit to produce gas from which families can cook and light their homes in an area with no mains electricity. Their children can now study at night, in a country which has 12 hours of darkness every day. This is a small-scale project, which could be put at risk by some of our modern large-scale ideas about limiting the numbers of cattle as we try to care for the earth. Although large-scale cattle herds can undoubtedly be environmentally detrimental, in developing countries owning one cow can be an important way for a family to climb out of poverty: fertilisation for the soil, milk for the children, study for the teenagers. We have to hold this question of development and ecological futures alongside that of poverty.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin for introducing this debate, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, said, covers a huge subject. It is an enormous challenge, not just to this country but to the whole world, and we have to get it right to preserve our grandchildren’s future.
I thank the Government and pay tribute to them for what they have done. They have enshrined in law the 0.7% of GNI and have stuck to it. We all know how much we have been lectured and harangued by the Liberal party as to how much European standards are better than British ones but on this occasion, the British standards are far better than the European ones. If the EU countries spent half what we spend, there would be an enormous increase in the financial aid that goes to developing countries. I hope that the Liberal party will tell its friends in Europe that they had better get their act together if they want to improve the planet.
I welcome in particular what the Government have recently done with regard to oceans. We discussed plastic in oceans in your Lordships’ House and I took part in that debate, but to sign the protocol for a 30% improvement in the oceans by 2030 and to become part of the global alliance shows the UK to be yet again at the forefront of these challenges. On climate change too, the doubling of the UK’s international climate finance is strongly to be welcomed. It gives the local people in affected countries the ability and the help they need to combat climate change and to reduce the causes of it.
My noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned biodiversity. I will give one example of where UK help has been very effective in producing a success story. It is a small-scale project—the sort that the right reverend Prelate mentioned and which I am sure he would welcome. It was done by the South Georgia Heritage Trust, which spent a lot of time and effort getting rid of rodents that man had introduced to South Georgia with huge detrimental effect on nesting birds. In 2015, that project finished, and the report in 2018 showed what an enormous success it had been by eliminating rodents on South Georgia. The best applause your Lordships will ever get for a project is to hear the amount of song now sung by the South Georgia pipit, which you would not have heard 10 years ago. That is just the sort of project we should be doing round the world.
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, on her introduction today and generally for her work on waste and food. I echo her comments on the illegal wildlife trade.
Many noble Lords will be aware of a bird called the hoopoe. It has existed not only in its own right but in myth and legend for thousands of years. It appears in the Bible and earned its showy crest by being wiser than King Solomon: it had a part to play in his relationship with the Queen of Sheba. It appears in the Koran, and is particularly celebrated in the Conference of the Birds, which is an amazing poem in Persian literature: the hoopoe is the messenger of the birds and their leader as they go on a long journey. It is a messenger again today, because it is a migratory bird, and its increasing appearances in southern England talk to us of climate change. Today, I shall talk particularly about migratory birds and ask the Minister about habitat and COP 15.
Many of our best-known summer birds are migrants. There is the cuckoo, whose calls mark the start of spring. There are swallows—your Lordships will know the well-known phrase that one does not make a summer—flycatchers and all sorts of summer visitors. Then we move into autumn, when other species take over: fieldfares, waxwings and so on.
All those migrants have in common the need for safe passage during often very long migrations, feeding grounds on their long flights and the habitat for them when they reach their destination. Of course, there are threats from hunting. Some EU countries, such as Malta and Cyprus, are still not playing their part in this. Does the Minister know whether Cyprus has continued to improve since UK military bases there made a real effort to address the carnage from netting and shooting birds? In July, the EU Commission issued France and Spain with a notice that they are in breach of efforts to protect the turtle dove, which we virtually never hear in England now, from extinction. Far too much hunting is seen as tradition and tied in with patrimony.
My Lords, I want to talk about the importance of improved smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has a current population of 1 billion, which is due to grow to 2 billion by 2050. That is not sustainable. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and support his plea for an open debate on family planning, which is hard in Africa when your nearest clinic may be 40, 50 or 60 miles away and you do not even have a bicycle to get there.
Africa is also where 70% of the population depend for their livelihoods—even their lives—on agriculture, where 70% of farmers are women and where every woman farmer you meet who has learned to make money from her holding will spend it on educating her children. That is sustainable development. I have mentioned this story before in the House, but I once met an old lady in Kenya who had a four-acre smallholding and was employing five families on it. I asked her, “What did you do with the money after you learned to make a profit?” I knew what the answer was going to be, but she replied, “I educated my children”. I come to the important question: “What are your children doing now?” “Well, my son is an airline pilot and my daughter is teaching IT skills in India prior to coming home”. I thought to myself, “Yes”, and that result is from just four acres. It is the way forward for Africa.
The World Bank has said that money invested in agriculture in Africa takes three or four times the number of people out of poverty than money invested in other businesses. African agriculture needs investment and could bring huge rewards in terms of kick-starting a much bigger economy, but there are problems. The first is infrastructure in the form of better mobile connectivity for weather reports, market reports and prices, and even technical advice. You send a picture of a plant and a message will come back saying what is wrong with it along with what action you might need to take. Farmers need better roads for getting seed and fertiliser in and the harvested crop out. Better power is required to process crops locally in order to avoid the huge post-harvest losses prevalent in Africa. However, most countries have no national grid, so as has already been mentioned, village solar power for batteries is the obvious answer. That also helps kids to do their homework and people to engage in other nocturnal activities which at the moment cannot take place.
5:06 pm
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UNEP’s International Resource Panel’s 2017 report estimated that material resource use—biomass, fossil fuels and non-metallic minerals—was expected to reach 90 billion tonnes. That is three times that used in 1970, and may more than double again between 2015 and 2050. Alongside the increase in material resources, global energy consumption is expected to rise by as much as 63% by 2040, much of which is attributed to expected consumption in countries that currently depend on fossil energy sources.
Growing demand for land, unsustainable use of natural resources, population growth and climate change are driving rapid deforestation and degradation of land. Deforestation and land-use change account for around 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This imperils natural systems which sustain life and underpin economic activity. Something must be done—quite a lot of somethings, in fact.
The environment should be at the heart of international development policy. Environmental protection and poverty alleviation are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have sustainable economic development if we fail to properly care for our finite natural resources or if we destroy the fragile ecosystems upon which human life and well-being depends.
We cannot hope to preserve our iconic species, our pristine natural habitats or those other resources if people living in those countries are destitute and lack good jobs. Without rapid, inclusive and climate-informed development, more than 100 million people are at risk of being pushed into poverty by 2030 as a direct result of climate change, particularly through changes in their water, agriculture and energy. Building climate resilience will help individuals, households, communities, countries and systems better to prepare themselves for the potential impacts of these changes.
By using our international development spending well, we can help to tackle poverty and natural environment. Just two weeks ago, I attended a dinner here with experts in this field, and I shall share a case study we heard to illustrate this point. In Zimbabwe, unemployment is rocketing, especially among young people. Tourism is down by more than 60% from 2008 levels, and the country is in the grip of a drought, with people and animals competing for precious, limited water supplies and failing crops leading to major food insecurity. This rising poverty is leading to an increase in deforestation and poaching as people plunder their natural resources just to make it through the drought.
On the face of it, National Park Rescue exists to protect a national park and the animals that live in it, but to do this it has become the largest local employer. It has established a functioning micro-economy between the park and the communities that surround it, prosecuted and imprisoned career criminals, and increased tourism to the area, all of which helps the local people appreciate that the park is an asset to be protected. It estimates that we have only 10 years before elephants, rhinos and lions will become extinct, so there will be no second chances if we get this wrong. It has shown how you can help to alleviate poverty by protecting the environment or, to put it the other way round, how you can help to protect the environment by alleviating poverty.
Our Government have recently made a number of important commitments in this area, which I very much welcome. The announcement made by the Prime Minister at the UN General Assembly last month to double the UK’s international climate finance spend, to help developing countries turn the tide against climate change and species loss, was particularly welcome. This means an investment of at least £11.6 billion over the next five years. Can the Minister say more about how this fund will be managed and what its priorities will be? A number of different government departments are involved in this work, and we know how difficult that can be. Can she explain how the work will be co-ordinated between them?
On biodiversity, the Prime Minister also announced at UNGA a new £220 million fund to save endangered animals such as the black rhino, the African elephant, the snow leopard and the Sumatran tiger from extinction. He rightly said:
“It is a privilege to share our planet with such majestic beasts as the African elephant, the black rhino and the beautiful pangolin. We cannot just sit back and watch as priceless endangered species are wiped off the face of the earth by our own carelessness and criminality”.
What are the Government doing to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, a destructive criminal industry worth £17 billion annually that is often associated with other illegal activities such as smuggling, human trafficking and drugs?
Before these announcements, UK ODA spending on nature-related development projects was relatively small compared to that of countries such as Germany and the US, each of which spend around $600 million to $700 million a year. As a country with an unrivalled love of wildlife and nature, it is welcome that we have begun to show greater leadership internationally. Another area in which the UK should show international leadership is to encourage investments in nature-based solutions. Currently only around 2.5% of the money invested to tackle climate change goes to nature-based solutions. Can the Minster give me an assurance that the Government will increase their focus on such solutions?
Half the world’s rainforest has been destroyed in the past 40 years, and rainforest continues to be lost at a faster rate than ever. It drives me completely nuts that these ancient, irreplaceable forests are cut down to grow soy, not for local indigenous people but to feed our pigs, which could be fed on food waste. However, that is a debate for another day.
I declare an interest as a trustee of Cool Earth, a non-profit organisation working alongside rainforest communities to halt deforestation and its impact on climate change. Local people stand to lose the most from deforestation, and have the most to gain from its protection. As such, they are the forest’s best possible custodians. Cool Earth partnerships are community-owned and community-led—an approach that research has continually shown to be the most effective way to keep rainforest standing. Protecting rainforest is one of the most effective actions that we can take to tackle climate breakdown. What are the Government doing to support them?
More than 1 billion people depend on fish as their main source of protein, and about 200 million depend on fishing for their livelihoods. However, our oceans are suffering. We are told that by 2050 they will contain more plastic than fish, measured by weight. Our oceans are being overfished. Fisheries that were once abundant have either collapsed entirely or are on the verge of collapse. Our land-based practices are resulting in acidification of our seas, and plastics and microplastics are building up and making their way back into our food systems.
Closer to home, noble Lords may have seen the story over the weekend of a malnourished baby sperm whale washed up on a beach in Wales, with blue plastic sheeting and other debris in its stomach. For years I have tried to do my bit while on holiday by picking up plastic on beaches, but I am aware that it is literally a drop in the ocean. The story of how my husband’s photograph surrounded by this plastic ended up in the Sun is for another day, I think. What work is being done by the Government in this area?
Finally, I would like to ask my noble friend about the entirety of DfID’s spending. Under ODA rules, it must be demonstrated how spending alleviates poverty and contributes to economic development. Does she agree that we should create a new “do no environmental harm” rule for ODA spending so that it does not undermine UK objectives on international biodiversity, sustainable resource use and climate change? This is not an optional add-on; it is a priority. I am delighted that so many experts in the field have signed up to speak today. I look forward to hearing from them all and learning more.
The World Bank has given us a lead, having established that it has dual goals. It wants to reduce poverty, but also to promote greater equality, which it sees as essential to achieving the first goal. I was glad that the noble Baroness made the point in her very interesting speech that combating poverty is vital to the cause of effective policy on climate change. Perhaps this will ring true in all that the Government say during the next few weeks—that they are determined to eliminate poverty and see this as essential to the survival of humanity. I would love to hear that but, unfortunately, I am not confident that it will happen.
The World Bank has established that, on current economic growth predictions, some 6.5% of the global population will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030. We need to see this as a grave challenge. The pace of global poverty reduction has halved between 2013 and 2015. Sub-Saharan Africa saw the number of people living in extreme poverty increase from 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015. Meanwhile, the wealth of the world’s 1,900 billionaires increased by $2.5 billion each day.
It is also worth facing the challenge that the poorest half of the global population is estimated to be responsible for approximately 10% of global emissions, while the richest 10% is responsible for 50%. Against that challenge, it is understandable that the World Bank could empathise with not just a fight against poverty but the cause of promoting greater stability.
Debates about development are so often dominated by talk of GDP. It has been a sort of totem pole which we are expected to worship. Surely it is becoming increasingly recognised that matters including wealth distribution, quality of life, poverty, climate change, sustainability, health and gender all come together in what we are trying to do.
Against that background, I hope the House will forgive me if I make what might seem to be a rather partisan point in the run-up to an election. It happens to be a deeply genuine conviction on my part. I do not begin to understand how an overriding commitment to the market as the solution to all our problems is viable. How can we welcome the prospect of deregulated markets? The challenge is to have intelligent, sane, rational regulations in place which face up to these interrelated realities and produce coherent and effective results.
Alongside this is the need for tax reforms. We need to put a great deal of work into this. I am not suggesting that the Government have not done a bit, but we need to do a great deal more. We also have to face up to the issue of the race to the bottom on corporate tax. Social justice and a fairer society must become part of the culture of corporate society itself. It is not just a matter of blowing your whistle and calling them to heel, but of generating a realisation that there is an unrivalled responsibility to promote a fairer society and more even distribution of wealth.
The approach that I am advocating for the Government will take courage and leadership. Populism will have no place in a genuine fight. When Churchill led us into the Second World War—thanks to the support of the Labour Party, which came to insist on his premiership—he did not indulge in populism. He used all his powers of rhetoric and his enthusiasm to inspire the nation to what should happen. It is a very sad reflection on our democratic system that, as we go into a general election, that type of leadership, while at a premium, is conspicuous by its absence.
I have long been concerned that the increasing demand for humanitarian aid, much of which now goes to middle-income countries, has squeezed the budget for spending on pro-poor development, by which I mean health, education, infrastructure, capacity-building—those kinds of things. Those budgets have been squeezed because of the need for humanitarian support. I am not decrying that support, but it none the less has had that effect. If we add climate change to it, it is obvious that the budget in these areas will come under even more pressure.
The reality is that both the developed and the developing world must completely reshape their economic model within a generation if civilisation on this—our only—planet is to survive. It is a fundamental, radical change on a scale never previously envisaged. As we engage in providing assistance to poor, developing nations, we surely have to be mindful of how we ensure that we reduce the problem as we do so, and do not add to it.
DfID has committed to targeting 50% of the climate change spending that comes from the aid budget to mitigation in accordance with the United Nations objective, but clearly—I give credit to the Government for acknowledging this—if we are looking at the times ahead, we have to consider mitigation alongside prevention. In that context, it has to be holistic. I contest that, if we are to meet this challenge, we have to unlock new money if development funding is not to be swallowed up by climate change. In fact, I have heard some sources within government suggesting that we should re-designate the entire development budget as a climate change budget. I would wholly resist any such suggestion. It would be a criminal neglect of the world’s poor if that happened.
We have to unlock new money and find ways of securing many more resources than have been put into the system. The UK is justly proud of our sustained commitment to delivering 0.7%. I give credit to my former colleague, Michael Moore, for introducing the legislation to put it in law. That is a piece of honour for the UK which I hope we will all stand by, but there is little scope to increase total aid flows above matching our commitment, unless we can tap new sources of money. I suggest that they must come from one source or another in the private sector. One vehicle being developed is the insurance industry. Not only can it produce models for insurance even for the vulnerable poor, possibly in co-operation with donors or Governments, but it can also offer expertise to people on how they can mitigate and adapt to climate change; it is in its interest to do so to reduce its own risk exposure.
It is in the register of interests that I am chair of a new organisation, Water Unite. Our aim is to apply a 1% levy on the sales of bottled water, and use the proceeds to invest in clean water, sanitation and plastic reuse and recycling in developing countries. If we could sign up enough of the world’s retailers and commercial catering companies, we could invest tens—even hundreds—of millions of pounds, in innovative projects to provide sustainable clean water, good sanitation and a reduction of plastic waste, without any burden on the taxpayer or the aid budget. To date, the Co-op is supporting us, along with Elior, a French-based catering company, and we are in active discussions with other key players. This is innovative in how we raise the money and on the scale of what we can invest to achieve sustainable improvements in infrastructure. The Minister and I have had this conversation, but if at some time the Government, with no contribution other than encouragement, could help more retailers to join us, we could do so much more.
I shall say something about fossil fuels, which I know something about. We know that the world is heavily dependent on fossil fuels; indeed, the use of fossil fuels is still growing. How are we to deal with fossil fuels during the transition and in our development policy? The World Bank has said that it will stop funding fossil fuel projects, other than in exceptional circumstances. The IDC has asked DfID to do the same. It declined, although it said that it will not fund coal. I do not disagree with the reasoning that DfID has put forward—it just shows the difficulties of addressing these issues—but for many developing countries, their natural resources are the foundation of their economy. We know that quite often it distorts that economy, and does not necessarily deliver a fair distribution of wealth, but without them their economic alternatives are limited.
Take a country such as Nigeria: it needs to know how a net zero carbon world would shape its future, which is currently highly dependent on oil. Guyana has just made the world’s biggest oil discovery in decades. It will want to feed the global transition with its resources. Are we to ban it from doing so? These are difficult questions. In recent months, BP has come under attack, even in this House, for its funding of the arts in the UK, which people regard as somehow tainted. To me, this has come from what I would call the woke sector trying to make some sort of statement but not facing the reality: we depend on companies such as BP. Ultimately, they must be part of the solution.
Take our domestic situation. The UK oil and gas industry supplies 45% of our energy needs. Currently, it generates a £30 billion annual surplus on our domestic balance of payments and employs more than 270,000 people. That cannot be switched off today or tomorrow. We have to work out how. We drive fossil fuel cars, heat our homes with fossil fuels and use products requiring fossil fuels in one form or another. Even our electricity is not carbon-free.
Let us not demonise the fossil fuel industry but get it on board and try to make sure that, by challenging it, it is part of the solution. The industry has capital and technical expertise. We are going to need those fossil fuels in the transition. Remember that this is about net-zero carbon, which means that there will still be fossil fuels in the mix in 2050; it is just that they will be offset or stored. Let us not pretend that we can switch them off and close them all down tomorrow. I am afraid that people who want to show how committed they can be are a little overeager and not too realistic about how it can be done. We need to do it as fast as possible and we should focus on development funding in developing countries, so that they can bypass fossil fuel for their own economic resources by using renewable and sustainable resources. I absolutely agree that that is the right way for our development funding to proceed.
Having said that and made my other cautions, one other thing I am slightly surprised about is how little population is discussed in the context of development. One of the problems we have is the pressure of population on the world’s resources. I do not have a dramatic answer but if we could contain the growth of population or even have a managed reduction—I mean that in terms of natural reduction—that would ease the pressure, yet it never seems a significant part of the policy. People often say that Thomas Malthus’s doomsday forecasts were wrong but maybe they were just ahead of the time. In a sense, everything that climate change threatens—the pestilence and disease—is exactly like the problems that he said would ultimately threaten mankind. We should be realistic about the practicalities of this because we could be facing a Malthusian Armageddon if we cannot tackle these problems.
This is my final point. Canada’s carbon tax was an issue in its election, as people did not like it; Macron had to face the Gilets Jaunes over fuel taxes; the COP has been moved from Santiago to Madrid because of demonstrations against inequality, and so forth. It is absolutely clear that we are in a climate emergency. The question, to my mind, is about political will as well as technical expertise. If we hear from the Greens, I am sure they will have the answers but not necessarily ones that would be as politically acceptable as they like to think. Is 21st-century politics up to this task? That, to me, is the question and it is a hell of a challenge.
The other image is from Malawi, one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of its people live in and around villages where they grow the crops they need to sustain themselves. The maize they produce needs to be cooked, and they need a source of heat to do this. For too many, that is provided by charcoal, which they obtain by cutting down trees. So the country is gradually being denuded of the trees that are needed to sustain wildlife. There is another problem too. Hillsides denuded of trees are being eroded, and the silt this produces is finding its way into Lake Malawi. As a result, the quality of the water in that huge lake is being diminished and this in turn means that fish, another important food source, are losing out too. The authorities are doing what they can to discourage this practice, but it is not easy to stop it in a poor country where other sources of heat are hard to find. This experience reminds us that trees are not just an important means of soaking up carbon from the atmosphere. They bring all the benefits of biodiversity, and they stabilise the ground on which they grow.
What can be done about this? There are obvious limits to what our Government can do to prevent the further loss of biodiversity in Malaysia in order to produce palm oil. But producers need markets, and they are vulnerable to international pressures. Our Government can surely add their voice to the many who are protesting at what has been going on there, and they can do more to discourage its use here for products that we use at home. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what is being done about this.
As for Malawi, where DfID has a significant and much-valued presence, as it has in the Sahel and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, there is an urgent need to do what we can to assist the authorities there in combating the cutting down of trees for charcoal. There are at least two prongs to what this might involve. One is investment in alternative sources of energy, especially the provision of solar-generated, carbon-free electricity. One can see that in villages where lighting has now been provided, on a small scale, in halls and birthing centres which were formerly dark after sundown but now have light to enable activity to carry on afterwards. Wider use of carbon-free electricity would assist the effort to stop the cutting down of trees. The other prong is education. Just as the people who live there are now learning about the benefits of access to clean water, so it should be about the benefits of preserving the environment. Life in these villages is rooted in traditions which are hard to break down. But surely we can do something to help there, out of the budget that is available for overseas development. I wonder what the Minister can say about this too. I look forward to her winding up this debate.
I urge those working on our environmental investments, which I gladly commend and welcome, to recognise the contexts of poverty, support small-scale projects as well as larger ones and ensure that larger-scale projects do not exacerbate small-scale poverty.
On aviation, it is interesting to note that in 2009, it was Labour Party policy under Gordon Brown to build a new runway at Heathrow—one runway. In contrast, in 2008, the Chinese decided to build a new airport at Daxing. It opened on 25 September this year. It has six civilian runways and one military runway, and by 2025 it will handle 72 million passengers and over 620,000 aircraft movements. Perhaps we have been helping climate change in a small way by our delay on the Heathrow extension.
The topic of CFCs, which no Lord has mentioned yet, is an old friend of mine, as I was heavily involved in it when I was a Minister in the 1980s. It is disturbing that illegal production of CFCs, which has been tracked to China, equates to about 10% of UK CO2 emissions. That is just illegal production of one substance. This is an international problem, and we are just a very small cog in a very big wheel.
China is building or planning to build some 300 coal-fired power stations around the world from Vietnam to Turkey, and we all know what a dreadful polluter coal is. The China Electricity Council wants to cap coal power capacity by 2030. That is the good news, but the bad news is that the figure it has suggested for the cap allows it to build two large coal-fired power stations a month for the next 12 years. That alone will completely shatter the 1.5 degree aim for global warming and put in jeopardy the 2 degree target.
That is just one country, but China is not alone. India wants to increase its coal-fired power capacity by nearly one quarter in the next three years. Those challenges on the international scale far outweigh anything that we can do.
Russia welcomes global warming: it is very important for it. While the city of Irkutsk is collapsing as the permafrost melts and the methane bubbles to the surface, Tiksi has been given a new military facility as Russia pledges to spend a huge amount of money opening up the North Arctic route along its northern coast and developing its property in the Arctic. That could do more damage to the world’s climate and biodiversity than lots of other things.
My key recommendation to the Government is that this is not only a financial issue: they must use their soft power to maximum extent to bring the rest of the world on board. We recognise that our Government are a world leader and have set standards for others to follow, but they must, just as much as spending the money, bring others on board to take the world forward with their help.
However, the main threat to migrating birds is habitat loss: wetlands drained and turned into farmland, an expanding Sahara due to climate change and loss of food as powerful insecticides wipe out insects. Neonicotinoids may be banned in some countries but you can bet your bottom dollar that the manufacturers will be busy finding new markets for them.
The interplay of aid money, tackling climate change, restoring biodiversity and strengthening, not weakening, local communities is very sensitive. In October this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations made an agreement with the European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, which will lead into COP 15. In particular, it is increasing funding that will boost countries’ efforts to bring about sustainable changes in agricultural policies and practices, to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and natural resources. The programme will address some of the most unsustainable practices in agriculture, such as the use of highly hazardous pesticides, and scale up ecosystem-based approaches that favour natural pest control and protect pollinators. As other noble Lords have said, it is extremely important that this is not an either/or approach.
The DfID 2015 strategy on resilience to climate change and environmental sustainability made almost no mention of biodiversity. Other strategies make almost no mention of poverty. If the money for the Government’s recent pledge to give £1.3 billion to climate and biodiversity comes out of the aid budget, that is a real example of this issue. It is all about climate change and biodiversity but, as my noble friend Lord Bruce of Bennachie said, there is an interplay in tackling food scarcity, poverty and climate change. It is not an either/or situation. That is the big lesson for COP 15.
I hope that the Government will look again at the agreement I mentioned between the FAO and the EU because it is a sound strategy and one that the UK would do well to build on. That is why I heard with incredulity the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about how we cannot learn lessons from the EU; he is entirely wrong.
Finally, I mention the environmental activists who are killed or imprisoned for defending habitats and challenging pollution. We often read about them in the newspapers, in places such as Brazil. This week, in a letter to me, Amnesty International highlighted the case of the activists who have challenged the lack of a clean-up and compensation for a chemical spill in Vietnam that wiped out 6,000 acres of coral reef, meaning that thousands of local fishermen lost their livelihoods. It especially highlights the case of Tran Thi Nga, a mother of two boys. She protested about the pollution and spoke up for fishing families. As a result, she is currently serving nine years in jail. That is the price for speaking out against pollution. Will the Minister undertake to press the Vietnamese Government to recognise that this is a totally inappropriate response to pollution and to release this brave woman?
Another need is security of tenure on the land. Many farmers have only loose tenancies from a local chief whose ownership of the land is probably not even registered. It is a mess, but I am pleased to say that DfID is now doing a lot of good work in this area. Without security of tenure, it is difficult to invest. Why would you spend four years’ worth of your farming income on drilling a borehole when you could easily then lose your land? Indeed, why would you borrow money if only 40% interest rates are available? It makes no sense at all. Donors like DfID should guarantee loans to farmers at interest rates of less than 15%. Various UN pilot schemes have been run in this area which have worked well.
One of the things a farmer might want to spend money on is water, because that could quadruple the output of the farm. However, African rains come all at once, so mini reservoirs make sense. Africa is also full of aquifers which are hardly tapped at all. The West needs to help by spending money on analysing the quantity and quality of these aquifers to ensure that the water is used sustainably, unlike what is happening in India and China. Africa uses only around 2% of its annual rainfall, which is a tiny proportion. Parts of Asia use 40%-plus, while obviously in the Middle East the proportion is much higher than that. By far the most urgent need in this area is to help farmers borrow money in order to put in communal irrigation schemes. I am talking about helping them and not necessarily paying for the schemes because they deliver a good financial reward if farmers can get hold of the money.
That brings me to the greatest need for African agriculture, which is knowledge. We must invest in agricultural training colleges which have to be open to women. We must ensure that women farmers can get training on their farms, and we must encourage the private sector to assist in training. I cite as an example of the latter a visit I made a few years ago to a Diageo brewery in Addis Ababa which had started training farmers to grow the barley needed to make its beer to the spec it wanted. The brewery started with a few hundred farmers, but when I visited, it had 3,000 farmers and intended to expand that number to 15,000 to 20,000. Those farmers were making money and educating their children.
Now, of all the natural resources that need sustaining in Africa it is the soil. The Malabo Montpellier Panel has calculated that the economic loss from soil degradation in sub-Saharan Africa is worth $68 billion per annum—I repeat: per annum—affecting 180 million people. Women farmers need to know how to manage the soil, how to rotate crops and how to plant without losing moisture. Soils are a long-term business, but it is hard to think about future food when you are desperate for food today and you have no understanding about crop rotations or organic matter. There is no doubt in my mind that min-till—or, better, nil-till—is the answer. The moment you turn the soil and have brown earth, you can see the organic matter turning to dust. I have seen this; it just floats away in the lightest of breezes.
The other problem is that the soils get too hot, 30 degrees or more. One solution is to use the debris from the previous crop—the leaves and stems of maize, for instance—to cover and shade the soil. You open the debris in lines to plant the seed but leave it elsewhere in the field to cool the soil, conserve moisture and, eventually, provide organic matter when it breaks down.
In west Africa, I have come across an even better system: nitrogen-fixing trees. There are two varieties. The trees shade the soil at the same time as enriching it with nitrogen. You plant the seed just before it rains—it is vital to have that incredibly useful weather information on your phone—and then, when it does rain, these trees miraculously drop all their leaves, leaving the fields basking in open sunlight to kick-start the growth of the crop, before regrowing their leaves after a few months to give the welcome shade.
In conclusion—moving from field back to politics—first, we have to get all Governments to wake up and recognise the opportunities and problems here. All African Governments must fulfil their Maputo commitments to put 10% of their GDP into agriculture; of the 57 African states, I think only seven or eight currently do so. Sound, profitable agriculture can transform lives—I have seen it in reality. Secondly, we must put more money into training in agriculture and the basics of running a business, including soil management. Thirdly, we must incentivise a long-term approach by granting legal security of tenure. It can be done by tenancies as well as land registration, and I am pleased to say that DfID is already doing wonders here. Fourthly and lastly, we must help build the research capacity in Africa itself and the means of getting that knowledge to the farmers. There is a lot to be done, but the rewards are huge.