LONDON — U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy stood up to give a speech in London Tuesday wanting to be a global climate leader. By the time he sat down he had managed to undermine those sweeping ambitions.
Lammy has since drawn criticism from diplomats and campaigners for telling his Kew Gardens audience that the country’s long-standing promise to deliver £11.6 billion in climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26 — to which Lammy personally committed while in opposition — was now subject to a spending review.
“Downgrading one’s commitment is not really a positive signal, nor a sign in the right direction,” Democratic Republic of Congo Ambassador Tosi Mpanu Mpanu told POLITICO.
Lammy’s speech pitched the U.K. as returning to global leadership on climate change. The warming earth was more important than any other security or geopolitical threat, he said, as he committed the full force of the British foreign service to addressing the crisis.
In June, a week before Labour won the U.K. general election, Lammy gave a “commitment” to deliver on the previous administration’s climate finance pledge — despite the country’s having fallen behind on its payments.
But when pressed on Tuesday, he described the pledge as an “ambition” and noted the “tough fiscal environment,” explaining the goal was subject to a government-wide spending review.
“Labour promised throughout their election campaign that they would be the ones to take climate change seriously and restore credibility to the U.K.’s climate diplomacy on the global stage,” said Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based climate think tank.
“Yet now he’s in power, David Lammy is saying previous commitments made to the world’s vulnerable countries might get torn up. That is the opposite of taking climate change seriously.”
The Foreign Office argued that the government’s position has not changed and that all spending plans inherited from the previous government were subject to review.
Policy details pending
In his speech, Lammy said the Labour government would restore the U.K.’s claim to international climate leadership after former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was widely seen to have neglected the issue. The speech contained plenty of aspiration, some strong signals on long-awaited reforms to multilateral development banks to release more cash, but few concrete announcements.
Labour wants a new global clean power alliance, Lammy said, but failed to name any fellow countries who would be members. The U.K. will also appoint dedicated envoys for climate and nature, he said — but they haven’t got around to recruiting yet.
The mixed messages arrive at the most delicate moment in climate finance negotiations in almost a decade. Diplomats have spent the past year preparing a deal on raising the current global goal for finance above $100 billion per year at the COP29 U.N. conference in Baku in November.
Last week, however, the Azeri hosts signaled the talks were bogged down. Mpanu Mpanu said the new goal “was one of the keys to be turned to guarantee trust-building and ensure the success of COP29.” Mattias Söderberg, the global climate lead at DanChurchAid, said reduced financial commitments could have a “big political effect” in Baku.
“Any move by the U.K. to renege on this commitment so close to COP would send completely the wrong message to billions of people on the frontline of climate catastrophe — including women and girls most affected by this crisis,” said ActionAid UK Co-Chief Executive Hannah Bond.
Lammy said he was aware of the need to assist developing countries, which have done relatively little to cause climate change yet suffer most from its effects. Under international treaties, rich countries have agreed to support them in cleaning up their economies and building infrastructure that can cope with the destructive forces of warming.
“I certainly feel very strongly about small island developing states particularly, who are on the frontline and are disproportionately affected,” Lammy said.
But Michai Robertson, a climate finance negotiator from Antigua who advises an alliance of small island nations at the U.N., said rich countries were failing across the board to prove they are willing to assist those nations — even as they demand that all governments increase efforts to cut emissions.
“There’s this pressure for ambitious climate action. But there doesn’t seem to be that push for a fair, ambitious finance and support,” he said.
That has left island negotiators “flying in the dark,” he said, while rising sea levels and storms threaten their communities.
Delivering on the U.K.’s existing promises would require current finance rates be accelerated significantly. The U.K. government spent just £2.8 billion in the first two years covered by the pledge, the website Carbon Brief has reported, leaving a shortfall to be made up over the final few years.
“It’s disappointing to see Labour without a bold plan on our climate finance promises,” said Louis Wilson, head of fossil fuel investigations at NGO Global Witness.
Asked for his view on the COP29 finance goal on Tuesday, Lammy said he could make no financial guarantees at this time, lest he face a “storm” from Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
“In his speech [Lammy] rightly said that climate change is the world’s greatest danger,” Adow said. “If he means it, he needs to put his money where his mouth is and invest in tackling the problem.”
