Over 70 non-profit and campaign organisations have called on Labour Party prime minister Keir Starmer to step up the government’s climate ambitions. Crucially, they’re demanding he set the UK back on track after the previous Conservative government derailed the country meeting its domestic and international commitments on the climate crisis.
Labour: ramp up the climate action
On 20 September, 71 environmental non-profits, faith and international development organisations, as well as local groups, penned a letter to Starmer. Together, they called on the prime minister to ramp up the UK’s action on the climate crisis ahead of upcoming climate negotiations at the UN General Assembly.
Heads of state will gather at the UN headquarters in New York and discuss climate commitments ahead of COP29 in November. At this, governments will use the opportunity to signal their climate leadership. Crucially, they may highlight their new domestic climate plans for meeting 1.5°c. This would be ahead of the deadline to submit these in february 2025.
Of course, as the Canary has previously highlighted, the UK is currently not on course to meet its domestic or international targets to keep below 1.5°c of warming. This was the consensus of the government’s independent advisory body, the Climate Change Committee. Specifically, we wrote that:
Now, just six years away from its 2030 deadline, the CCC is once more saying that the country is not on track to hit this target. While it commended a handful of policies under the former Conservative government, overall it concluded that these were “not enough”. The report lambasted the Tories for rolling back a number of its main green policies
Moreover, a large focus of discussions at COP29 in Azerbaijan will centre round international climate finance (ICF). There, countries will agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance. This is the target for climate finance that high-income nations will provide to low-income nations to deal with the impacts of the climate crisis.
On this too, the Tories decimated the UK’s contributions to countries on the frontlines. In part, the Tory government did so by changing the goalposts on what constituted ICF. Essentially, it relabelled existing spending to make it seem like the UK was giving more money than it actually was.
To Starmer: ‘your government will be judged’
Given all this, the letter states that:
as the fifth largest historical emitter and sixth largest economy, the UK has both the responsibility and the capability to take far greater action on climate change – at home and overseas
Crucially, it calls for the UK Labour government to lead by example domestically and contribute to fair financing of climate action globally, making clear:
these are the benchmarks against which your government will be judged.
Adding to this, it calls out the injustice that it is currently:
communities and countries that are the least responsible for causing the climate emergency that are paying with their lives, livelihoods, homes, lands, ecosystems, and futures
In particular, it underscores how the climate crisis costs African nations up to 5% of their GDP. For Small Island Developing States (SIDS) it’s even worse than this, at 35% of annual GDP.
As a result, the letter calls on the Labour prime minister to restore and renew a range of the UK’s climate goals and commitments. In particular, it demanded the following:
- Return UK overseas aid commitments to 0.7% and reverse last year’s ICF accounting changes.
- Champion an NCQG that centres the needs and priorities of affected countries and communities, and delivers the scale of public finance needed.
- Commit to providing future UK ICF that is genuinely new and additional. It calls the new UK government to do this by putting in place polluter pays measures. This would generate new public finance in a fair way.
- Raise ambition with a UK 2035 NDC that sets a new global benchmark commensurate with the UK’s responsibilities and the urgency to keep 1.5°C alive. It suggests the government should go well beyond the existing sixth carbon budget for this.
UK must pay its fair share
Executive director of Climate Action Network UK (CAN-UK) Catherine Pettengell, responsible for coordinating the letter, said:
Today we are calling for more ambitious and fair international climate action, and urging Prime Minister Starmer to play an important role in that. Countries and communities that have done the least to cause the climate emergency must not pay with their lives, livelihoods, and futures. We have to secure agreement at COP29 on a justice-based finance goal, and with the talks locked in acrimony, a new approach from the new UK government – starting next week at UNGA – could make an enormous difference.
The letter is also a part of a global day of action. Specifically, around the world, people are calling for governments in the Global North to #PayUp their fair share of climate finance. The actions are in solidarity with those unfairly bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
Pettengell also referred Global North governments’ – including the UK – to meet the previous $100bn climate finance goal. Collectively, they failed to fork out the $100bn in climate finance by 2020 that they had pledged to poorer nations at COP15 in 2009.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), countries may have finally delivered this in 2022. However, governments provided over two-thirds of the public finance through loans. What’s more, the costs of adaptation to the climate crisis and mitigation from its impacts has spiralled. A 2022 study estimated poorer nations would need $2tn in funding by 2030.
She therefore said that:
We need trillions and not billions globally, and the UK must pay our fair share. But there are fair ways to generate the finance by making polluters and the wealthiest in our society pay, that do not unfairly cost UK households. As Prime Minister Starmer prepares to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly, progress on climate finance ahead of COP29 must be a top priority for him and all World Leaders.
Echoing this, senior campaigner at Global Witness Flossie Boyd said:
As people from Brazil, to Germany, to Vietnam struggle with extreme weather, it’s clear we need urgent action to redress climate damage. It’s disappointing to see the new government without a bold plan on our climate finance promises when frontline communities are already paying.
As a fossil fuel power, the UK has the responsibility to take far greater action and we know that taxpayers can’t foot this bill alone – and we also know big oil’s profits could cover the damages that people are currently footing. The UK must lead in getting huge polluters like BP and Shell to pay their fair share.
Featured image via the Canary
