By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The UK government has announced that £1bn in military aid for Ukraine will be partly funded by money meant to help developing countries battle climate change.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has since resigned but remains in office, announced at a Nato summit in Madrid, Spain, that the UK will provide another £1bn in support for weapons and equipment to Ukraine. This almost doubles total UK military support since the start of Russia’s invasion earlier this year to £2.3bn.
In a tweet following Johnson’s announcement, Kwasi Kwarteng, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), said part of the “vital” aid is coming from the climate budget.
“My Department has contributed to the effort by surrendering climate finance and foreign aid underspends,” Kwarteng tweeted.
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The reallocation comes as developed countries like the UK are still failing to live up to their pledge to jointly provide $100bn a year in climate finance to developing countries.
News of the reallocation came just a week after humanitarian organisation CARE released a new report revealing that most of the climate finance reported by rich countries is taken from the aid budget for poor countries, instead of providing additional funding.
“It is quite shocking to see that the world’s leading nations do not care about their international commitments to support climate and development in poor countries,” said John Nordbo, the report’s author, in a press release. “Instead of being the backbone of global governance, these countries, in reality, undermine international cooperation and create mistrust in the rest of the world.”
The study found that only 6% of the climate finance between 2011 and 2018 was “new and additional” to the official UN commitment for rich countries to provide 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) in ODA.
While the UK did better than most – ranking sixth among 23 – it still provided only a small amount of climate finance on top of the 0.7% ODA pledge.
