Climate Change Bill [HL]

The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, had made an interesting and useful point on whether the committee has the power to consider the sort of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, referred to—that is, whether the activities that we undertake in the United Kingdom have a harmful effect on children overseas. If the committee is not empowered to consider that, should it be added to its functions? My view—I hope to convince the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, of this—is that the expertise mentioned in the amendment ought to be available to the committee to perform its functions, irrespective of whether we widen them in the sense that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, would advocate. I refer Members of the Committee to the speech made by the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor, in introducing last year’s Budget. He said that Britain would lead the way in helping developing countries address climate change and announced a £50 million scheme to prevent the destruction of the largest rainforest in the world, in the Congo basin of central Africa. "““Led by Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai, it will help 50 million people…whose livelihoods are now under threat””.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/07; col. 821.]" In the same speech, Mr Brown mentioned the Iwokrama project, which is an area of 360,000 hectares dedicated by the people of Guyana as a research station for the benefit of humanity as a whole, to be administered by the Commonwealth. This is a good example of the need for the committee to have knowledge and experience of international development. Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has said, its duties are primarily concerned with emissions in the United Kingdom, it has a duty under Clause 27(1)(c)(i) to advise the Secretary of State on the contribution towards meeting the carbon budget that should be made by trading schemes. Although initially only the ETS is set for implementation, others which may be developed in the future will cover activities by the United Kingdom in developing countries. There are activities under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism under which, according to the Government’s helpful briefing paper 5, $7 billion was invested in 2006 with another $25 billion in the pipeline. It might be argued that, so far, rainforest preservation is not covered by the clean development mechanism, but in his reply to me last week, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that the Government’s priority was to reduce emissions from deforestation and that, to achieve this, agreement had been reached at Bali for a framework of positive incentives. Deforestation accounts for between 18 and 25 per cent of global carbon emissions according to the Global Canopy Programme, and that has to be compared with the 3 per cent for which aviation is responsible, on which Members of the Committee rightly focused attention last Wednesday. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also mentioned the Government’s review of financing mechanisms to reduce deforestation, which was announced last September and is expected to be fed into the next UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009. Meanwhile, under Clause 30(2)(a), the committee might be asked to advise on the limits that are proposed to be set by any trading scheme that may be proposed involving measures to prevent deforestation. In another answer, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that we were discussing a proposal by President Jagdeo, in a speech to the Commonwealth finance Ministers in Georgetown last October, to make Guyana's rainforests a carbon sink for the rest of the world. Mr Jagdeo reminded his audience that the Stern review had described avoiding deforestation as a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the Brazilian environment Minister, Marina Silva, has suggested extending the Jagdeo plan to include the Brazilian and Venezuelan parts of the Amazon rainforest, which is an excellent idea from several points of view. One is that Brazil is the fourth largest contributor to global warming because of the way in which it is now burning up its forests and if Venezuela could be persuaded to join the venture, it could play a role in facilitating the UN Secretary-General’s good offices process for addressing the dispute between Guyana and Venezuela on their joint boundary dispute. An international Amazon carbon sink scheme, on the lines of what is already happening with British help in the Congo basin, could be financed by the rest of the world, along with the Essequibo Peace Park, under which it is suggested that a band of forest on both sides of the Venezuela-Guyana border should be reserved for the indigenous peoples who straddle the frontier. The maintenance of peace between the two neighbours, and the protection of indigenous people, could thus be added to the reduction of global warming as benefits to be achieved by halting deforestation in the Amazon basin. Considering that every hectare lost increases the height of the carbon mountain that the world has to climb, it is alarming that we have to wait until the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 before a comprehensive mechanism is launched. Surely it would be possible to look at interim solutions that would match regional needs and put together international consortia to finance viable proposals, as we do, for instance, in the case of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is financed by contributions from member states. The Norwegians have announced funding of $500 million a year for the next five years on forest projects and if all other states made proportionate contributions, the total would be more than enough to cover the $20 billion a year that Stern estimates is needed to halt deforestation altogether. We talk about $20 per hectare per year, as compared with $300 per hectare per year spent by the European Union on the conservation services provided by Europe's farmers. So, the problem should not be finding the money but determining the basis on which it is to be allocated. If the committee had that necessary expertise, it could provide advice on President Jagdeo's scheme or, better still, on the expanded Brazilian version. I strongly support the amendment. I believe that it has great practical value in the Bill as it stands and would have even greater value if we were to expand the functions of the committee, as has been suggested.