UK urged to reverse aid cut as G7 meets to discuss climate cash
The UK is being urged to reverse its overseas aid cut as major economies face pressure to increase cashflows to poor countries to tackle climate change.
Finance ministers from the G7 group of major economies will face scrutiny on delivering public aid and private investment for poorer nations to develop cleanly and cope with the impacts of rising temperatures, when they meet in London this week.
And Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants to secure a “substantial pile of cash” when G7 leaders meet in Cornwall later in June, as the UK government aims to ramp up momentum towards the crucial COP26 climate summit in November.
Delivering on
climate finance to support countries who have done least to cause the climate crisis and are likely to suffer the most from it has been described as a matter of trust by COP26 president Alok Sharma.
Mr Johnson has called for the world to deliver on a longpromised target of $100 billion (about £70bn) a year of public and private finance to developing countries by 2020 – and then go further.
It is more than a decade since countries agreed the $100bn target, but analysis shows rich countries are still about $20bn short of the goal.
Though the UK government has doubled its climate aid to £11.6bn, it has faced criticism for cutting its overall aid budget from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of GDP in the face of the pandemic, as developing countries struggle with both Covid-19 and the climate crisis.
Christian Aid said the G7 should broker a new deal to pay for the unavoidable loss and damage caused by the climate crisis, and cancel debt for poor and climate-vulnerable countries trying to rebuild after the pandemic.
And Mohamed Adow, director of African climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa, said: “Finance is the missing piece of the climate problem, it’s the key that will unlock greater emissions reductions and bring help for those on the front lines.
“The UK has a key role to play in this considering that it has shamefully cut aid for the world’s poorest people in the middle of a global pandemic in a year it is hosting two summits which are essential in helping the world’s vulnerable people.”