Daily Telegraph on climate aid: New headline, same old figures
- 05 Dec 2012, 14:30
- Robin Webster and Christian Hunt
"
£2bn of UK aid to help Third World go green" reads the Daily
Telegraph
front page headine today. But is the money it's talking about
new?
The Telegraph writes:
"Britain last night pledged to spend
almost £2 billion of taxpayer money to help poor countries tackle
climate change, including wind turbines in Africa and greener
cattle farming in Columbia".
"Each household will contribute £70 to
schemes to tackle climate change in developing countries before
March 2015."
Apparently, Tory MPs are "dismayed" and "furious" at the
timing of the announcement, whereas Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has
hailed it as "fantastic news".
You might be forgiven for thinking that that this story is
based on the announcement of new monies for climate finance from
the UK. But as far as we can see, there is no new
money.
New projects, but not new funding
At the
international climate talks in Doha yesterday,
energy and climate change minister
Ed Davey announced a UK government
commitment to funding "new climate programmes" in Africa, South
America and countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change.
This includes £149.5 million of funding for a variety of
projects - renewable energy generation in Africa, increased access
to water for drinking, sanitation and irrigation in poorer
countries and projects to improve degraded grazing land in
Columbia.
Does this indicate an increase in climate aid from the
UK?
No, according to the Department for Energy and Climate
Change (DECC), which told us that none of the amounts the Telegraph
is talking about are newly announced funding:
"It's not additional - it's part of the
£2.9 billion already announced. It's an allocation of already
existing funds."
In other words, the details of the projects are new, but
the money is not.
UK international climate funding
The UK is providing money to help poorer countries address
climate change.
In 2009, the UK committed to providing £1.5 billion between
2010 and 2012 to help developing countries respond to climate
change under what was known as the
Fast Start Finance Initiative. The money was
to "[support] the World's poorest to adapt to climate change and
[promote] cleaner, greener growth".
The UK then committed to providing £2.9 billion of aid
between April 2011 and March 2012 through a new initiative -
the
International Climate Fund
(ICF).
The two funding streams overlapped somewhat - DECC told us
that as of today the UK has spent £1.5 billion of the total funds,
and has £1.8 billion left to spend. So it appears to us that a
total of £3.3 billion has been earmarked for helping developing
countries respond to climate change between 2010 and
2015.
The Telegraph's report
So the Telegraph is quite correct to say that the UK has
committed a remaining £1.8 billion - or "almost £2 billion" to
international climate finance in the years leading up to
2015.
But it is not correct to suggest that Britain pledged the
money last night. It was promised more than eighteen months ago -
in fact the Telegraph has
already reported on it last
November.
Will this cost every household £70 as the Telegraph claims?
Analysis by the
development NGO Tearfund shows the Telegraph
appear to have calculated this figure by dividing £1.8 billion by
the number of households in the UK -
26.3 million.
Tearfund
point out that the money comes from the
overseas aid budget, and forms part of the government's
pre-existing commitment to giving 0.7 per cent of the UK's income
to overseas development aid. That means the money is coming from
general taxation.
So dividing the total cost by households might not be a very
sensible approach. This isn't money that's being levied on energy
bills - for example - where dividing by the number of households
might produce safer results.
So as far as we can tell the UK government didn't allocate
any new money to international climate financing yesterday. But it
did reiterate its already existing commitments, and allocate some
of the funding already promised to specific projects - and with
Doha and the Autumn statement coinciding, that's apparently what
makes a front page story.
