UK claims it is still delivering £11.6B climate finance pledge

The United Kingdom government has claimed it is still delivering its five-year £11.6 billion ($13.1 billion) commitment to international climate finance, after advocates raised concerns about the safety of the pledge.

Climate advocates had worried that the newly appointed international development minister, Andrew Mitchell, had a “blind spot on climate” and may not have protected the commitment from spending cuts. But the government clarified its position on the key climate finance pledge on Wednesday night.

"We are delivering £11.6bn of climate finance over five years, which is helping to improve access to clean energy, avoid deforestation and protect ecosystems,” a U.K. government spokesperson wrote to Devex. There was no mention of adaptation spending, despite the demand for it among low-income, climate-vulnerable countries.

The U.K.’s International Climate Finance, or ICF, commitment is the “primary instrument the UK has to support developing countries as they seek to adapt to the impacts of climate change and reduce their emissions,” according to the ICF document. The pledge was largely protected from the cuts the U.K. made to its aid budget last year because it was simultaneously hosting a two-year presidency of the United Nations conference of the parties summit on climate, and the associated COP 26 event in Glasgow — enabling the U.K. government to flaunt its £11.6 billion commitment and use it to cajole other countries to make commitments of their own.

But since then, the U.K.’s aid budget has come under greater pressures, in particular from ballooning costs for domestic spending on refugees, the extent of which is unknown but is estimated to be billions. The budget was already very strained, having been controversially reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income last year. Domestic spending cuts to public services are also expected, potentially causing a difficult political environment for international pledges.

COP 27 is due to begin next week in Egypt, and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Wednesday he would be traveling to the event, reversing his previously stated intent to skip it. Mitchell is not attending COP 27, but secretaries of state from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be.

Climate finance — or the lack of it — is set to be a dominating issue at COP 27, with high- income nations’ promise of $100 billion in annual climate finance still unfulfilled. The U.K. spent its COP 26 presidency, which it still holds, encouraging countries to increase their finance and be transparent about their commitments in order to build trust between countries, especially those in the global south.

But recent domestic financial pressures had prompted concern over the future of the U.K.’s climate finance pledge — a plan that is already weighted toward bulk spending in the future rather than immediate expenditures, according to Simon Maxwell, former director of the ODI think tank.

Now, with Mitchell as minister for development, decisions about aid allocation — such as funding the U.K.’s climate finance — are his responsibility.

Before entering the cabinet, Mitchell campaigned, ultimately unsuccessfully, to protect the 0.7% budget from government cuts. But experts worried he doesn’t fully grasp the importance of climate change as an international development issue.

“He did have a blind spot [on climate], let's hope he’s overcome it,” said one person who worked with Mitchell during his previous tenure as international development secretary between 2010 and 2012.

Sources told Devex they worried Mitchell would not prioritize defending the U.K.’s climate finance commitment amid the strained financial environment in government — particularly when there are other major international expectations from the U.K., such as a Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria pledge, which has so far not appeared.

In Mitchell’s memoirs, published in 2021, there was scant mention of climate despite a heavy emphasis on development.

“I well remember civil servants at the time struggling to convince Andrew Mitchell that this [climate change] was an important issue,” wrote Maxwell in a book review of the memoirs. “In the end, they had to take him to Indonesia and show him deforestation, to drive the urgency home. … tellingly, climate change is barely mentioned in the book.”

The government has already missed a September deadline to pay $288 million to the Green Climate Fund and another $20.6 million pledge to the Adaptation Fund, Politico reported last week. The news prompted Clare Shakya, director of climate change at the International Institute for Environment and Development, to ask prior to the government’s statement: “Can the UK say it is still committed to the £11.6bn [in climate finance]?”

Bilateral cuts to climate resilience programs have also been expected, including in Pakistan, which suffered greatly from widespread flooding over the summer. A planned program for Pakistan was reduced by 70%, meaning just one district out of a planned three could be helped, according to the International Rescue Committee. IRC said in an email it “is aware of significant cuts to programmes funded by FCDO which are designed to provide climate support to such [low-income, climate vulnerable] countries.” The email was sent Oct. 14, before Mitchell became development minister.

IRC was planning to release further information in a press statement but canceled amid pressure from government officials on partnering organizations, according to a spokesperson.