UK

David Lammy's ambitious green foreign policy plans will require cash and commitment

Sky News
Tue 17 September 2024 

David Lammy chose to make his first major policy speech as foreign secretary in the lush surroundings of a glasshouse at Kew Gardens.

He recalled how his father brought him to Kew as a schoolboy to experience the rainforest environment of his native Guyana.

The sort of opening you might expect to hear from a politician - especially one promising to make climate change and biodiversity "central to all the foreign office does."

There's evidence Mr Lammy's ambition for a new kind of foreign policy is genuine, however.

Take the education centre he and his wife founded in Guyana four years ago for local students to learn about the country's last remaining rainforest and how to conserve it.

But delivering on his pledge would test even the greenest of foreign secretaries.

Mr Lammy announced three new initiatives: A clean power alliance that would allow poorer countries to "leapfrog" polluting fossil fuel energy in favour of renewables with the help of richer ones; an overhaul of international finance to help poorer countries reduce their carbon footprints and adapt to the climate impacts they didn't create; and international leadership on protecting biodiversity.

All of these would be delivered by exploiting the UK's diplomatic "heft," he said.

Essential goals if we're to enjoy a habitable planet - but all very similar to pledges we've heard before.

The main challenge is how to divert flows of finance from fossil fuel projects or unsustainable agriculture that drives deforestation to cleaner, more sustainable ones.

And while investment globally is shifting rapidly into renewable energy - which is often less expensive to build - carbon emissions are at all-time highs (though possibly peaking).

The reality is that fossil fuels and conventional agriculture are where the biggest profits are still to be made.

You only need to follow the money, as a recent report by NGO Action Aid did, to see that.

It concluded since the Paris Agreement in 2016, $3.2trn (£2.4trn) of investment - much of it from banks in the UK - has flowed into fossil fuel projects and $370bn (£281bn) into industrial agriculture.

I asked Mr Lammy how he could compete with that, given the UK had just £11.6bn to spend on climate finance in developing countries between 2019 and 2026.

The reply suggested that even that amount of money was no longer guaranteed.

Mr Lammy said: "Meeting the £11.6bn remains our ambition." But, as we've heard repeated by ministers throughout Westminster in recent weeks, he added that "difficult choices" lie ahead for Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her autumn spending review.

However, if, in the absence of much money to play with, Mr Lammy can exploit the UK diplomatic machine to attract partner governments in a climate alliance, it might not be a futile exercise.

There is much governments can do to remove subsidies, favourable tax regimes and other incentives, to make environmentally harmful investments more difficult - and to encourage the kind needed to stabilise the climate and protect biodiversity.

But that requires genuine partnerships that typically are built not just with trust, but cash on the table