Monica Harding

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) for securing this debate about our support for a country that is a friend and an ally, and one to whom we have owed gratitude over more than 200 years. I start by adding my condolences to the families and friends of all those who lost their lives or remain missing in Nepal and Tibet, following the August floods and the floods in Nepal over the weekend. I pay tribute to the UK rapid deployment team and humanitarian crisis response specialists who have supported British nationals and the wider crisis response to the floods in Nepal. Those brave and skilled teams are a clear example of the UK’s world-leading excellence and expertise. The news might have moved on, but the people of Nepal face rebuilding their country while experts note that such disasters might become more frequent in the region in the coming years. Indeed, the UK Government’s national security assessment of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse cites severe degradation or collapse of the Himalayas as particularly significant for UK national security. The August floods were not unexpected. Nepal’s mountains are warming rapidly. In 2023, the UN Secretary-General reported that they had lost almost a third of their ice in just over three decades. The wider Hindu Kush Himalaya region is also warming significantly faster than the global average. All the while, international agreement founders when it comes to action that truly meets the moment. Rebuilding comes at a great financial cost. The Government of Nepal have written to the UN loss and damage fund to request $20 million, which is 0.7% of the reported $2.7 billion it has estimated in physical damage to infrastructure and economic losses. The loss and damage fund itself is suffering from a lack of finance. It has reportedly already received requests totalling $2.8 billion from 119 countries, but only $400 million has been given by the international donor community. The demand vastly outstrips supply. With the impact of climate change intensifying, and with the super El Niño in the process of biting, it is deplorable that the international community continues to fail when it comes to preparing for climate shocks. Although I welcome the rapid deployment of UK personnel and the £5 million in humanitarian aid to help with the crisis, that £5 million is not enough and does not reflect the closeness of our relationship with Nepal. I remain deeply concerned about the wider UK aid budget, which has been slashed to 0.3%. That includes the cutting of the UK humanitarian crisis reserve by 12%, from £85 million to £75 million, leaving less flexible money for rapid support in humanitarian emergencies. Cutting the humanitarian crisis reserve at a time when many of the world’s poorest countries—the ones often most vulnerable to the impact of climate change—are dealing with those impacts is strategically illiterate. I ask the Minister, as I have before: when will the Government set out a road map for a return to spending 0.7% of GNI on official development assistance, and will the Government revisit the cut to the humanitarian crisis reserve? Climate finance has also been cut—there has been a halving of the UK commitment to the Green Climate Fund and a significant cut to our international climate finance, despite an ambitious new Government ICF strategy. The reality does not match the rhetoric. It is also a matter of national security for us here at home, as I have mentioned. The national security assessment of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse is brutal in its assessment of the impact on our national security and prosperity, with crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. It points out the critical ecosystems that support major global food production areas and impact global climate, water and weather cycles, and their importance, including in the Himalayas, and how their degradation and collapse will lead to water insecurity, severely reduced crop yields, fisheries collapse, changes to global weather patterns, release of trapped carbon exacerbating climate change, novel disease and loss of pharmaceutical responses. It will drive migration and serious and organised crime and lead to black markets in scarce food, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals, with non-state actors gaining control over scarce resources, and there are pandemic risks. As instability grows, it leads to conflict and military escalation. Wider development finance can provide some solutions, but definitive action on debt sustainability, illicit financial flows and reform of the multilateral development banks is necessary. Given that the countries most vulnerable to climate change are often also vulnerable to debt distress, it is imperative that the Government use their upcoming G20 presidency to take real and meaningful action on the issues, as well as charting a course forward on climate finance. This is, after all, a fairness issue—a justice issue. Nepal is responsible for only 0.1% of global emissions, yet it is bearing the consequences of runaway carbon emissions and global inaction in tackling them. As the Nepali Prime Minister recently said at the UN General Assembly, countries like Nepal are “hit by the climate we did not warm and hit again by the wars we did not start.” What does fairness look like? Estimates that we heard at the International Development Committee, on which I sit, put the UK’s fair share of international climate finance, as the world’s sixth-largest economy and fifth-largest historical emitter, at £9 billion a year. Add in inflation and the changes to the Government’s accounting methodology, and the ODA element of ICF4 diverges even further from the UK’s fair share. Given all those factors, our ICF allocation is roughly 50% lower than ICF3. Failure to tackle the climate crisis will erode development gains and push more people into humanitarian need, resource competition and a vicious cycle of poverty and instability, and will damage the UK’s reputation as a leader in climate and development. With COP31 fast approaching, what will be the Government’s strategy for real and meaningful action? How will the Foreign Secretary go beyond words to action that is reflected in tangible UK commitments, both domestic and globally? The floods in Nepal have shown us what can happen and what will continue to happen if we do not act. There is still time to take action. World Bank research estimates that climate change could force 260 million people to move within their countries by 2050, but that immediate action to reduce global emissions could reduce that number by up to 80%. I urge the Minister and the Government to take bold steps with our development and climate strategy, our aid and our G20 presidency so that the catastrophe in Nepal does not become the norm for communities everywhere. The UK has an opportunity to lead, and we should take it.