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Find out more about climate change and climate debt and how they are disastrous for the world's poor by reading our briefings and reports

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Climate Change

This page brings together the latest WDM news and commentary on climate change – the greatest challenge facing humanity. This is both an environmental, developmental and global justice issue. While rich countries are responsible for almost three quarters of the excessive carbon emissions driving climate change, it is poor countries that bear the brunt of the impact.

 

Climate change

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Still the greenest government ever? A cartoon for WDM by Ben Jennings

The green promises have turned toxic.

And in Ben Jennings’ depiction, so too have Cameron and Osborne.

Cartoon of Cameron and Osborne - Gang Green

David Cameron made the headlines back in 2006, visiting the Arctic and posing for photos with huskies to prove his green credentials.

But 2012 has been the year that finally put the nail in the coffin of the Conservatives’ promises to be the greenest government ever.

We’ve seen Tory MPs openly calling for the Climate Change Act to be scrapped. We’ve seen George Osborne pushing for more money for oil and gas at the expense of renewable energy. We’ve seen David Cameron veto the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate...

Low emissions cuts by rich countries overshadowed Doha climate conference

The 18th annual Conference of the Parties (COP 18) took place in Doha, Qatar between 26 November and 8 December. Like last year’s conference in Durban, the stakes were high, with the world coming ever closer to the point of no return on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only legally binding emissions reductions treaty, due to expire at the end of 2012.

In the event, despite an agreement to approve new extremely unambitious targets for a second commitment period for Kyoto running to 2020, the conference was characterised by inaction on emissions cuts on the part of the rich developed countries and increasing despair amongst poor countries.

For a start, big emitters Russia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand joined the USA in refusing to join the second commitment period for Kyoto at all, meaning that legally binding emissions targets will apply to the EU, Norway, Switzerland and Australia alone. But the target agreed (just a 20 per cent drop on 1990 levels) is nowhere near the 40-50 per cent cuts that developing countries were calling for and, once carbon offsets are factored in, translates to only a minimal reduction on current emissions. 

And while limits were placed on the carrying over of excess ‘hot air’ carbon permits from the first...

Ed Davey, climate finance and big business

During the first week of the UN Climate talks in Doha, campaigners from Kingston and Richmond World Development Movement group met with Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, to discuss the government’s contributions to climate finance. As WDM members, the group were concerned that the UK is pushing developing countries deeper into debt through climate loans.

Members of WDM Richmond and Kingston WDM local group present Ed Davey with paper ‘chains of debt’

The group delivered paper ‘chains of debt’ to Ed Davey, with handwritten messages from constituents asking him to ensure that the UK’s climate policies do not drive the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into poverty.

It is the world’s poorest people who are suffering the worst effects of climate change, and it is wealthy countries like the UK who are overwhelmingly responsible for the emissions causing the damage. We owe those worst effected by climate change a large ‘climate debt’. 

The UK government has been contributing to the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds (CIFs). One of these funds,...

The stakes are high in Doha

Guest blog by WDM ally Lidy Nacpil, from the Jubilee South Movement on Debt and Development Asia Pacific, writing from the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar.

I arrived in Doha on 2 December for the second week of the UN climate negotiations, to find that no progress has been made on the critical issues that should be resolved at this meeting. I didn’t find this surprising. My direct experiences with the last five annual UN climate talks before Doha have shown a clear effort by many of the rich, industrialised countries – ‘developed countries’ in UN language – to evade compliance with their obligations under the Climate Convention and their legally binding agreements to take urgent and immediate action to address the climate crisis and prevent it from reaching catastrophic levels.

It is no wonder that some climate justice activists are now refusing to get involved in the battles taking place in the context of the international negotiations. The odds are heavily stacked against the rights and interests of the majority of people all over the world, especially those from the South - from the ‘developing and least developing countries’ - who are the most vulnerable to the devastating impacts of the crisis.

Many of us do still choose to fight in the...

Doha climate talks: Scotland's contribution