Cameron Pledges £60 Million in UN Climate ‘Reparations’

King Charles III is greeted by Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron as part of COP28 during a visit to Heriot-Watt University's Dubai campus on Nov. 30, 2023. Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

The UK government has agreed to pay tens of millions in climate “reparation” Loss and Damage funds at this year’s U.N. COP28 summit.

On Friday, the UK government pledged a £60 million contribution to the world’s poorest countries affected by climate change at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

The Loss and Damage fund is a plan to get wealthy nations that benefited from fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution to compensate developing states.

The UK also announced £1.6 billion for international climate change projects throughout the summit.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron wrote on X, (formerly known as Twitter), that it is “vital we build on our support to the developing countries most impacted by climate change.”

“That’s why the UK has pledged up to £60m at COP28 to help repair the loss and damage caused by events such as floods and crop failure,” he added.

Last year, countries reached an agreement on establishing a fund to compensate vulnerable nations for “loss and damage” from “climate-induced disasters.”

The Guardian reported that this year’s funding is close to $429 million, with pledges from host country UAE as well as Germany, the United States and Japan.

$1 trillion by 2050

According to the government, loss and damage funds are “often framed as an act of compensation or reparation from more developed countries” though it said that “these terms are not used in the COP agreement.”

“However, some small island states are exploring avenues of legal redress on the liability of historically high emitters,” it added.

Former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described it as an “act of reparation.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said “reparations” for climate change were “not on the table” at COP27 last year.

A study published in 2019, quoted by Parliament, calculated that loss and damage for developing countries could rise from between $290 billion and $580 billion in 2030 and reach over $1 trillion by 2050.

1.2 Billion Climate Refugees

Vice-chair of the APPG on Environment, Labour MP Afzal Khan shared a statement on Friday saying that “a serious commitment to climate finance for loss and damage at this year’s COP28 conference is absolutely essential to support individuals who are made refugees in their own country as a result of extreme weather events.”

The APPG on Environment is a cross-party group of 150+ UK MPs and peers promoting “environmental ambition” in Parliament.

‘It is thought there will be 1.2 billion climate refugees in the next 25 years, with the impacts of climate change worsening, acting now is the only viable option,” added Mr Khan.

‘Industrialisation Has Clearly Had Huge Benefits’

Net Zero Watch’s Head of Policy Harry Wilkinson told The Epoch Times by email that “countries suffering from the effects of extreme weather should be supported, particularly poorer countries. ”

Net Zero Watch, which was founded by the former Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson, scrutinises climate and decarbonisation policies.

“However, it would be a mistake to view this in transactional terms,” he said.

“Industrialisation has clearly had huge benefits and it’s important to remember that the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] concludes that there is low confidence in any global trends for most forms of extreme weather. Ultimately, it will be economic growth, which means that extreme weather events have a smaller and smaller impact on our wellbeing,” added Mr. Wilkinson.

Climate researcher and creator of Climate Debate, Ben Pile, told The Epoch Times that on the face of it, the £60 million contribution gesture “is in fact peanuts.”

He said it was equivalent to about £1 per person in the UK, which echoes the discussion he made back in September about “Britain’s climate ‘aid’ to India—worth about £1 per Indian.”

In September, Mr. Pile noted that the choice facing “any putative beneficiary of the ‘climate fund’ is to either take the peanuts, and halt that radical progress—worth vastly more—or to ignore Western governments and burn some coal.”

On Friday, he said “as I pointed out then, India’s GDP is likely to rise by 1,000 percent over the coming decades.”

“So neither the UK’s contribution, nor the entire fund itself makes any difference to Indians, and would be a bad deal for them, if they were to take it as a bribe on a per-capita basis, versus their continued economic and industrial development,” he added.

He maintained that India and other countries would “all be better off burning coal, oil and gas.”

“And so they would be if, rather than destroying our own economies, we kept the supply of affordable and abundant energy, too. It would mean we would be able to better trade with developing economies,” he said.

Mr. Pile was deeply sceptical about aid, which he has previously called “an instrument intended to secure the establishment’s/government’s agenda overseas.”

“The point of these budgets, however, is not to deliver any good to people in need in the world. It is to keep afloat the parasitic fake civil society organisations and politically-motivated fake ’research' organisations that depend on government largesse and eco-billionaire handouts,” he said.

Climate activists said the £60 million “wasn’t enough.”

“It is encouraging to see that the UK government is committed to making the Loss and Damage Fund a reality, but this pledge is simply not enough and crucially, it’s not new money,” said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s Senior Climate Justice Policy Advisor in a statement.

The Epoch Times contacted the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office for comment.

PA Media contributed to ths report.