Create new 'anti-Farage' department for international development say climate campaigners

A new report is calling on ministers to mitigate climate change with a new Department for International Development and Global Stability

LONDON, GREATER LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, October 23, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Launched today, Exodus Equator: One Billion On The Move warns that continued inaction on tackling the global threat of climate change could bolster the far right threat in the UK.

The Earth’s equatorial belt, which runs through Australasia, Africa, India, the Pacific and Central and Latin America, is projected to see average annual temperatures rise above 29 degrees C.

Such extreme temperatures, only experienced currently in the Sahara Desert and parts of The Sahel, could put those regions, which are collectively home to more than three billion people, ‘outside the climate niche’ tolerable for human life.

The report highlights by 2050, one billion people could be forced to move from equatorial regions due to intolerable temperatures driven by climate change – increasing to three billion people by 2070.

The group of climate campaigners led by Jonathon Porritt is calling on UK ministers to create an “anti-Farage” Department for International Development and Global Stability to lead the world in mitigating the effects of climate change and prevent “the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of humankind”.

The group say politicians generally have “failed to respond to a gathering scientific reality” of global warming, because of an addiction to fossil fuels, accusing the Conservatives of “comprehensively trashing” the UK’s reputation for climate leadership.

They say that restoring the UK’s international aid budget to 0.7% of GNI and creating a new government department specifically to tackle the effects of climate change abroad is a “moral, social and security imperative”.

The proposed department would also be responsible for overseeing the delivery of the UK’s share of a Global Fund totalling over $2 trillion annually to enable the world’s poorest countries, hardest hit by climate change to adapt and build resilience against its impacts.

The recommendations echo Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Initiative which advocates for further development funding to help poorer nations respond to the climate crisis. In addition, the report calls for a new UN protocol to recognise climate refugee status in law to offer immediate support to populations in disaster-hit regions.

Launching Exodus Equator, leading environmentalist, Jonathon Porritt, said:

“The last government comprehensively trashed the UK's hard-earned reputation for leadership on climate issues – at precisely the point when climate impacts have worsened. Economic losses have multiplied, and millions of people globally are already being forcibly displaced as climate refugees.

“Action and capital investment on a grand scale is now needed to see the UK lead a just energy transition and the world avoid humanitarian disaster.”

The calls come as Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently announced plans for UK Special Representatives for Climate Change and Nature to support the global fight against rising temperatures.

Lammy told attendees at his Kew Gardens lecture that “Nothing could be more central to the UK’s national interest than delivering global progress on arresting rising temperatures ... The threat [of accelerating climate change] may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or an imperialist autocrat. But it is more fundamental. It is systemic. It's pervasive. And accelerating towards us at pace.”

Co-author, population and rights campaigner, Robin Maynard added:

“If Labour shies away from the challenge of increasing overseas aid now, there will be far bigger political problems further down the line.

“Farage and his far-right cheerleaders prey on concerns about migration, which will only intensify if yet larger numbers of people are driven to Europe from the equatorial belt.

“International Development needs its own Department once again if the UK is to meet the moral, social and security imperative to minimise and mitigate the accelerating environmental and humanitarian crisis, and the millions of refugees it will create.

“Ministers must be bold and decisive, confronting far-right critics with a simple choice: support UK overseas aid and climate spending in our national interest or see unmanaged migration on an unprecedented scale.”

Patrick O'Donnell
Higginson Strategy
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