ActionAid welcomes Foreign Secretary's climate commitments but warns it cannot shy away from scale of climate funding.
Responding to the Foreign Secretary’s pledge to make climate action central to the UK government’s foreign policy, Hannah Bond, Co-CEO at ActionAid UK, said:
“We are encouraged to see the new UK government take the first step in seriously addressing the urgent climate crisis impacting billions worldwide, after years of delayed promises and empty gestures. From our work, we know that climate change is one of the biggest injustices faced by women and girls across the world and today’s announcement is an important step in tackling gender inequality.
“While today's announcement is positive, the UK Government cannot ignore the scale of the funding needed to match its ambitions – one it must not and cannot afford to shy away from. The destruction caused by recent hurricanes and floods in the Caribbean and Bangladesh underscores why major polluters like the UK need to urgently and rapidly scale up climate funding. For too long, previous governments have chosen penny-pinching and inaction over the future of our planet – it's time for that record to change.
“With this year’s COP summit focusing on the transition away from fossil fuels, the government has set out an important step in the right direction. But to live up to today’s promise, it must immediately stop subsiding fossil fuels and introduce regulations on the UK banks and financial institutions that continue to fund and profit from climate chaos.”
[ENDS]
Contact the ActionAid press office on uk.media@actionaid.org or on 07753 973 486.
Hannah Bond, Co-CEO at ActionAid UK, is available as a spokesperson, please contact the press office to arrange.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.