Climate fund UK’s key priority: envoy

Marriott says London wants to see SIFC succeed

ISLAMABAD:

British High Commissioner Jane Marriott lauded Pakistan’s efforts for the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund to mitigate the climate-induced disasters, saying on Thursday that it would be a key priority for her country at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28).

In an exclusive interview with The Express Tribune at the British High Commission, Marriott, said that the United Kingdom was not just supportive of the Loss and Damage Fund but it wanted to see it becoming operational, adding that big emitters of carbon dioxide should put more in it.

The Loss and Damage Fund, agreed at COP27 in Egypt, is a historic new funding mechanism to provide financial assistance to climate-vulnerable countries that are experiencing unavoidable loss and damage from the effects of climate change.

The fund is a vital step towards ensuring climate justice for the poorest and most vulnerable countries, which are disproportionately affected by climate change, even though they have contributed the least to it. The fund is expected to be operational by COP28, this year.

“Pakistan was absolutely instrumental in delivering the Loss and Damage Fund; Pakistan played a great role and there have been quite a few challenging discussions about operationalising loss and damage,” the high commissioner said. Some progress had been made but a lot more needs to be done, she added.

“The UK is very supportive of the loss and damage fund,” Marriott said. “We do want to see more players, including the current big emitters, putting into that loss and damage fund, which is sort of one of the areas under discussion.”

The COP28 will convene on November 30 and continue until December 12, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), where leaders from across the world will discuss how they can ensure greater action on climate change.

The decision about setting up the loss and damage fund was taken at the COP27 held at Sharm-El-Sheikh. Pakistan had galvanised support for the establishment of the fund, first by having it placed on the agenda of the conference, and then pushing for a consensus agreement.

The dedicated fund, a demand pending for 30 years, was established to address losses and damages in developing countries, such as Pakistan, which are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.

‘We want to see SIFC succeed’

Noting that the UK currently did not have any engagement with the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), Marriott said that “we have to work with it to try and help it succeed because it’s the most important game in town to try and get the necessary economic reforms through, to get the projects through”.

“We want to see the SIFC succeed,” Marriot said, while recalling that the Pakistan government has said that information technology (IT), agriculture and minerals were its three priorities. She said that the UK would very much like to be part of that IT package.

King Charles was right all along

The UK diplomat, while referring to 75th birthday of King Charles III, said that her country wanted to highlight the theme of climate change because King Charles had been an advocate of treating “our planet and our home” well.

“Even back in the 1960s, he sort of made his first speech on why we should treat the planet well,” she said, adding that the UK would be announcing a couple of new climate projects in Pakistan at the King’s birthday party on November 14.

“Right now everyone is like, whoa, King Charles, you are saying all the right things. You are amazing,” Marriott said. He had been saying all of these things for years when he was kind of derided, the high commissioner added.

“Time has proved that he [King] was right; he was just too far ahead of his time,” she said, “had we listened to what King Charles was saying for the last few decades, the world would be a much better place.”

Response to Pakistan floods

Referring to devastating floods that affected roughly 33 million people in Pakistan in 2022, Marriott said that the floods were absolutely devastating in 2010 and 2022 followed by floods and monsoon rain in 2023. “The once-in-a-generational event is now, sadly, a much more regular occurrence”.

The UK has got two parts of its response, Marriott shared, saying it contributed $48 million to support Pakistan in 2022. The first bulk of spending was on the immediate humanitarian relief and helping with water, food, sanitation, shelter and those sorts of things, she said, adding that the second part of the intervention was around health and education.

Marriott said that the floods put about three and a half million children out of school, of whom one million were unlikely to go back without additional support. “UK’s intervention has already got about 85,000 of those kids back into school.”

For her, resilience had been an absolute key part about how Pakistan could control what was going on with climate change because ultimately it didn’t have that much control over how much fossil fuel the big polluters were putting into the atmosphere right now.

“But you do have control over how you can respond and build resilience within your own country,” Marriott said and added that none of this was Pakistan’s fault. While highlighting that Pakistan was the eighth most climate vulnerable country and producing less than 1% carbon, she said that Pakistan was currently the 32nd least well-prepared country in the world for climate change.

“So that’s something that Pakistan can do something about,” she emphasised. “UK is working and will continue to work with the authorities in Pakistan on trying to build climate resilience.” Also, she said, the environmental impact assessments should be at the centre to all policy decisions.

“So, if you’re building a new housing estate, for example, what is the impact on the environment of doing that,” Marriott said, adding that one has to look at things like if it is going to block natural runoff; if trees would be chopped down; what would the carbon footprint.

“So, for every policy, even if it’s something like family planning,” she said, it should be assessed what were the environmental pros and cons.

UK govt’s priorities

Highlighting the UK government’s priorities, Marriott said that the first one was keeping the temperature rise below 1.5C by halving global emissions by 2030; second was building resilience to current and future climate impacts; and the third around halting and reversing global biodiversity loss by 2030.

Meanwhile, she encouraged Pakistan to join the Sustainable Blue Economy Action Group as part of the Blue Economy Charter, saying that it would be really helpful as Pakistan had got lots of coastline and protecting and preserving that would be absolutely crucial for the good of Pakistan as well as for the planet.