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Anti-poverty campaigners from the UK will be presenting a giant cheque to the Chair of the UN Adaptation Fund today on behalf of the British public in spite of strong resistance from the UK government for the UN fund to receive any UK money.
Over the past three months, supporters of the UK-based World Development Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign have been sending individual donations of £1 amounting to nearly £15,00000 to the Department for International Development (DfID) to help developing countries cope with climate change.
They asked that their donations and the UK’s future climate finance for adaptation be sent to the UN fund as grants. The UK is currently pushing climate loans through the World Bank, which increases new and unfair debt for developing countries.
The campaigners have been engaged in an ongoing battle with the UK government, who rejected the donations and personal messages to the Development Minister, Andrew Mitchell, and strenuously resisted sending them onto the UN fund. Firstly, DfID sent the donations back to the charities, and then withheld the money threatening to send the cash to a ‘local charity’ in the UK. The campaigners say the response from DfID has been completely confused and embarrassed from the outset about how to deal with the funds.
The UK provides over 60 per cent of its climate adaptation finance as loans, and has not provided any finance to the UN Adaptation Fund. The UN fund set up through the negotiations in Poznan is supported by developing countries to manage climate finance because it has a more democratic structure, and because developing countries can apply to the Fund for grants. In contrast, the World Bank is seen as working in the interests of donor countries who cherry-pick specific countries to receive funds, mostly made up of loans. An early draft of the negotiating text which excludes progress made in negotiations earlier in the year, also specifically invites the World Bank to take the role of climate finance manager.
In the last few weeks, the World Bank announced that it will provide Bangladesh and Niger with new loans to help them cope with climate change, in a move the campaigners strongly criticised.
Kirsty Wright, climate campaigner from the World Development Movement said:
“The generosity of the British public at this time of austerity stands in stark contrast to the intransigent and immoral stance of the British government. People donated money to the UN fund because they do not want to see the decades of progress on debt cancellation for developing countries being rolled-back through new World Bank loans to in the name of helping developing countries cope with the affects of climate change.
“The UN fund must be supported and financed by rich nations, rather than them backing the undemocratic and mistrusted World Bank that has caused created deeper inequality in developing countries as well as pushing high carbon development as we saw with the loan they gave for a huge fired power station in South Africa earlier this year.
“The coalition government are breaking their pre-election promises by making developing countries pay twice for climate change that they are not responsible for causing. They are raiding the aid budget for finance and then passing it on to developing countries as debt through the World Bank. This is completely unacceptable, condemning future generations into deeper poverty.
”The lengths the UK government has gone to avoid giving any money to this fund, has been completely absurd, and really calls into question their commitment to a fair international deal on climate change in Cancun.”
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