We want to make poverty history but failure at Copenhagen will make poverty the future

By Douglas Alexander MP

Climate change is a defining political test of our era. As leaders gather for the European Council meetings today, a deal at the Copenhagen conference hangs in the balance. But I believe that getting the right global deal on carbon could be more vital to tackling global poverty than even the Gleneagles summit of 2005.

Climate change is not some future possibility for many of the world’s poorest people, it is a present reality. The Global Humanitarian Forum estimated recently that more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change.

I have seen for myself the impact that climate change is having in the developing world. In Kenya I met a man who told me that the seasons he remembered as a child have gone. In Bangladesh I met families who have had their homes swept away by the rising waters. In Ethiopia, I met women who had been forced by drought to walk further each day to collect water until they were walking 5 hours simply to drink from a watering hole shared by people and animals alike.

It is a tragic reality that the people who have done least to contribute to climate change – the global poor – are being hardest hit. By 2035, the Himalayan glaciers, which provide water for up to 750 million people across Asia, could disappear. By 2050, some twenty five million more children may be malnourished. By 2080, an extra 400 million people could be exposed to malaria.

Progressives came together in 2005 to make poverty history but climate change now threatens to make poverty the future for millions. That is why we have not only a self-interest, but also a moral responsibility to the developing world to work for a fair deal on climate change at Copenhagen.

But while the historical responsibilities of the West in relation to climate change are unarguable, it is in the emerging economies that we will see the greatest rise in emissions over the coming decades. So a climate deal must include both developed and developing countries.

Of central importance in getting developing countries to the table will be agreeing a consensus around the additional financial support that the developed world will provide for poor countries. I believe that Europe can lead the way here as it did in 2005, when European finance ministers agreed to increase aid ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles.

This is too important an issue for ‘wait and see’ politics, or old-fashioned horse-trading – that is why as a British Government we have made the case for additional and predictable flows to the developing world of around 100 billion dollars per year by 2020.

For our part, the UK will increase our investment in helping developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change – over and above our aid commitments to reach 0.7% of gross national income. We believe that the lion’s share of the funding for adapting to and mitigating against climate changes is additional to development assistance.

But at the same time, we have acknowledged that a limited part of the aid funding we are providing has benefits both in terms of tackling poverty and combating climate change, like the DFID funded projects I saw in Bangladesh that are lifting homes above rising waters and protecting crops and livestock from floods.

The Tories refuse to match the commitment Labour has made. But I believe it is not only morally right for developed countries to provide additional finance but it will be essential to securing a deal at Copenhagen. Given that climate change will affect all of us, it is in our own interests to help developing countries to ‘leapfrog’ dirty technologies and find a low carbon path to growth.

Climate change is one a defining challenges for our generation. It is not a future threat but a current crisis. It goes to the core of our progressive beliefs. It demands a progressive response because it is the world’s poorest people who are least responsible for the problem and it is they who have been affected first and will be affected worst. For many of the poorest people in the world, the weeks between now and the Copenhagen conference are not a window of opportunity but a window of necessity.

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