What does the commitment to green UK aid mean in practice?

BARCELONA — At last month’s G-20 meeting, British Prime Minister Theresa May vowed to make U.K. aid greener by only funding projects that support the transition to lower greenhouse gas emissions and that align with country pledges under the Paris climate agreement. “We will make sure we consider the impact all U.K. aid projects could have on the climate and how the effects of climate change could impact the project,” a spokesperson for the U.K Department for International Development explained to Devex. It follows the release of a report earlier this year from the parliamentary International Development Committee that identified climate change as the “the single biggest threat to stability and wellbeing in some of the world’s most vulnerable nations” and called for it to be an integral part of all U.K. aid spending decisions. The announcement is potentially a huge win for the climate and development sector, said Stephanie Draper, CEO of Bond, the U.K. membership body for development NGOs. “It really depends how rigorously DFID changes its procurement and decision-making process to make sure this happens.” --— Andrew Scott, head of the climate and energy program, Overseas Development Institute But the devil will be in the detail, and how strongly the requirement is enforced, said Andrew Scott, head of the climate and energy program at the Overseas Development Institute, a U.K.-based think tank. In theory, all projects are already supposed to be climate change screened and go through an environmental impact assessment, but the extent to which that happens varies. So what does the commitment mean in practice? DFID has so far provided few details. The spokesperson said that aligning the aid budget with the Paris Agreement would mean prioritizing low carbon growth and climate resilience. For example, when building roads or developing energy infrastructure, the government will consider the greenest ways to do this, including by using the best materials and design work to manage the impacts of climate change. While Draper said there’s a risk this could turn into a box-ticking exercise, she suggested three levels on which it could have an impact for NGOs working with DFID: strategic, programmatic, and operational. “From a strategic perspective, it’s looking at what the long-term implications of climate change are in the regions you’re working and the risks that it presents. Programmatically, it’s about asking questions around how to promote solutions that are climate friendly and also promote resilience for beneficiaries on the ground,” she said. From an operational perspective, she advised implementers to track their own carbon emissions and create policies to reduce them as a starting point. While it is hard to say with the information available whether there will be an impact on what projects are funded by DFID, Draper suspects proposals will be required to outline how projects support the Paris Agreement. A lot of NGOs, particularly smaller ones, may require new skills to fully integrate environmental impact into their work. There will be an expectation to look more thoroughly at what climate change and environmental sustainability impacts of programs are likely to be, and how implementation can be designed to be more climate compatible, Scott said. Education programs might have to consider the materials they use in a classroom, for example; community health care initiatives might have to ask what transport they’re using to reach patients, and energy projects might have to consider what they’re using to power communities. “It really depends how rigorously DFID changes its procurement and decision-making process to make sure this happens,” he said. Maryke van Staden, director of the low emission development team at ICLEI — a global network of local governments working on sustainability — recommended that NGOs also train staff to understand what more they could be doing in the climate space, and implement better ways of tracking impacts to make themselves more appealing to donors. Tracking impact will also apply to the government itself, Scott said. “At the moment, DFID has no assessment [of] what impact on the environment it has in overall terms … The intention of the commitment is that it will have an impact on the environment, but DFID is going to have to measure that,” he said. The outgoing prime minister’s new climate-first approach to aid comes alongside the introduction of a legally binding target for the U.K. to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. International development secretary Rory Stewart has also vowed to double aid spending for climate and the environment to more than £2 billion ($2.5 billion) over the next five years. But there are also many things the government is doing that are incompatible with its green promises, Scott said, citing its operations around trade and fossil fuels. “It’s not just DFID that will have to change, but other government departments. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in particular [which currently spends 4.4% of the aid budget] will have to improve their climate change and environment assessments more thoroughly,” he said.