UK accused of double counting £500m of aid to meet climate pledge

Last year, the Guardian reported that a pledge to spend £11.6bn on international climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26 was slipping out of reach because of chronic underspending and the oversea aid budget being reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income.

The previous climate projects funded under the £11.6bn pledge, in contrast, include renewable energy, low-pollution transport and forest preservation in sensitive areas around the world.

Thirty per cent of the spend towards basic humanitarian provisions in Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Sudan will now automatically count as climate finance.

The former Foreign Office minister Zac Goldsmith said at the time that this reclassification would “shred” the UK’s international reputation, shortly after resigning over what he called Rishi Sunak’s “apathy” towards climate action.

Developing countries, which have been disproportionately affected by climate breakdown, through increase flooding and droughts, have repeatedly expressed anger that the global north has given little support to them despite the historical imbalance in carbon emissions.

In order to convince previously low-emitting countries to transition to a cleaner future, wealthier, more historically polluting nations have been pressed to give financial support.