This Independent story about the Conservative Party's supposed plans to rejig the foreign aid budget is overstated but still worrying. It says:
...the promise on aid has been called into question, with suspicions that the party plans to funnel funds away from aid towards spending to fight global warming. The Tory paper says: "Action to tackle and adapt to climate change will permeate international development policy under a Conservative Government. It requires a multi-faceted approach. We will mainstream adaptation to the impacts of climate change throughout DFID's work by supporting development activities that reflect the changing nature of the climate."
This is both good and bad. If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is correct (and I'll accept for the sake of argument that it is), then some degree of adaptation will be necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming on the developing world. So defences against rising sea levels and so on will be necessary in places like Bangladesh. If DFID is going to help in that, all well and good.
However, the single most effective defence against a changing climate is an increase in a society's resiliency. In simple terms, that means wealthy countries are better able to shrug off weather-related problems than poorer countries. We can see that in the difference between what happened in Mexico when two identical strength hurricanes hit the same part of the country. In 1955, Category 5 Hurricane Janet hit the Yucatan and killed 600 people. In 2007, Category 5 Hurricane Dean hit the exact same place and killed no-one. The difference was that a richer, more technologically advanced, Mexico had been better able to protect its citizens.
Similarly, look at the difference between Hurricane Katrina and Cyclone Nargis. Katrina hit the poorest, most vulnerable part of America head on and, tragically, killed 1,836 people. But that pales into insignificance besides the similar strength Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the entire country of Burma two years later and killed at least 146,000. Again, the difference is the resilience of the societies involved, which depends upon their state of development.
That is why concentrating on aiding the development of poor countries is the most important thing we can do to avoid the effects of global warming. As Indur Goklany shows (many more papers here for the curious), using IPCC models, we can do best for the developing world by ignoring emissions and concentrating on development. In terms of fighting global warming effects in developing countries, resiliency should come first, then focused adaptation, and only then cost-effective emissions reduction. The developing countries, of course, realize this (and are also happy to exploit our fixation on emissions reduction as a valuable way of improving their comparative advantage further).
In that respect, anything that removes aid from Africa that is targeted towards general development and aims it at specific climate-related improvements is a backwards step. Even if the money is to be used for adaptation, we cannot be sure that it will prove as good value as general development. Suppose the seas do not rise, but disease increases? All the sea defenses in the world won't be as useful as a modern hospital in that case.
Remember Douglas Jay, and his belief that the man in Whitehall knows best. The fatal conceit applies just as much to development as it did to central planning of healthcare, especially when we're talking about planning for events that may or may not occur in 50 years time. The interesting and worthwhile idea of Aid Vouchers is the way forward, not some DFID bureaucrat deciding that if you're not going to spend the money on a global warming project he feels is worthwhile, then you can't have it. This policy is therefore incoherent.
Finally, why should this money come out of DFID's budget at all? I'm sure the various environment Departments and agencies could afford it.
PS I promised to link to my new study on "no-regrets" policies for fighting global warming. It's Americocentric, for obvious reasons, but it's available from the NCPA here.
