UK aid cut has 'profound implications' for COP 26, experts say

LONDON — The United Kingdom’s aid spending cut has “profound implications” for the country’s position as host of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021, according to climate diplomacy and policy experts. The government hoped the 26th Conference of the Parties — which the U.K. is co-hosting with Italy — would show the country as an international leader strongly engaged on global issues after leaving the European Union. But Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s recent decision to drop the country’s long-standing commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance — instead allocating just 0.5% of GNI next year — has skewed international perceptions of the U.K. as a development leader, according to experts. The government also plans to change its legal commitments to development spending. “In a time when #LDCs [least developed countries] need support more than ever, #ODAfunding cuts take us in the wrong direction,” tweeted Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi, who chairs the Least Developed Countries Group at U.N. climate change negotiations. He added: “With global problems of #COVID [COVID-19] & #climatechange, we need more solidarity - not less. As @COP26 President, we call on the UK to lead, not retreat.” The U.K. has not changed its climate finance commitment of £11.6 billion ($15.6 billion) over five years. But the decision to cut the aid budget still baffled close observers of climate negotiations because of the apparent absence of U.K. strategy — a long-awaited review of international policy has been delayed until next year — and the delicate need at COP 26 to rebuild trust in the process and long-term promises made by donors, particularly around the amount and conditions of climate finance received by lower-income countries. The decision was an unnecessary “disruption of the core messages the U.K. needed to build” on global cooperation over 2021, despite the country having a “perfect” diplomatic position to shape global debate, according to Nick Mabey, chief executive of Third Generation Environmentalism, an environmental think tank. Next year will see a confluence of issues — including COVID-19 vaccines, debt sustainability, and development finance — that are likely to “change the attitudes of Africa and major developing countries toward international institutions and frameworks,” Mabey said. How these issues are resolved will set the stage for the levels of trust at COP 26, he added. The lower the trust in the process, the higher the chances of failure, which could “fundamentally change people's conception of how global cooperation works, because climate is probably the area where the major powers agree most.” “Cutting your development aid is a bullet point in the wrong direction which could start a whole other set of people doing it,” Mabey said. He argued it removed the United Kingdom’s leverage in pressuring other countries to increase their climate finance, since they could now use the same reasoning as Sunak to avoid it. If this happens, it raises the prospect that “COP is all about money,” Mabey said. “Developing countries will focus on maximizing the short-term promises they get because they can't trust longer-term promises after that.” His view was echoed by Sarah Colenbrander, director of climate and sustainability at London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute, who said the cut has “profound implications” for the negotiations. “The U.K. is right to say that it is more generous than many other high-income countries, even after it has cut its development assistance budget. ... However, those other countries are not hosting the G-7 [summit of major industrial nations] or COP 26,” she said. “I don’t think there can be any bigger diplomatic blunder, especially in the middle of a pandemic.” --— Mohamed Adow, director, Power Shift Africa “The success or failure of major summits is hugely determined by the political capital and moral credibility of the host. The U.K.’s decision to cut its ODA will undermine its credibility as it urges other countries to make more ambitious pledges — on both emission reductions and climate finance.” The move also attracted criticism — particularly on the erosion of trust — from outside the U.K. Dennis Tänzler, head of climate policy at Adelphi, a Berlin-based think tank focused on sustainability, said the timing was “really hard to understand” and the move “undermined the commitment” to international cooperation at COP 26. “It’s not part of a coherent, strategic foreign climate policy approach,” he said. “I don’t think there can be any bigger diplomatic blunder, especially in the middle of a pandemic,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa think tank on climate. He added: “If this government breaks promises that it made in a manifesto, how can it be trusted by other countries negotiating internationally, from trade deals to climate accords? This will make their work presiding over the COP 26 climate summit much more difficult.” As a remedy, Adow urged the U.K. to put the “needs of the poorest countries at the forefront of the talks” in Scotland, including focusing on climate adaptation, loss and damage, and clean energy transfer. But cutting ODA could also reduce the ability to do this. “The U.K. ... has considerable experience thinking about climate change, thinking about the risks associated with it … [and] the adaptation measures that are necessary,” said Antony Froggatt, deputy director of the energy, environment, and resources program at Chatham House. “So us being able to share the experience through some of the overseas development assistance is an important thing we can do in the world, and reducing the budget makes it less possible for us to do that.”