Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 23 November 2022.
I completely agree with Delyth Jewell that the outcomes of the COP summit were disappointing and frustrating. The problems with these international summits is they inevitably move at the pace of the slowest, because there needs to be unanimous agreement. Clearly, a number of countries have their own reasons for slowing progress, and that, simply, is not going to be adequate to deal with the severity of the threat that the science suggests we now face from man-made global warming.
I think she is right that the one little bit of comfort was some support for the developing world—people, of course, who contribute the least to global warming, but are suffering the most the first. So, there's a real moral obligation on us, as an economy founded on fossil fuels to make a contribution, but, also, a strong self-interest. We know that levels of migration are set to increase as climate change hits, with people having been displaced from their land not being able to sustain a livelihood. They will be going onto other countries, and that will inevitably impact us. Even those who are not fully signed up to the science of climate change and fill our newspapers with warnings about migration should pay attention to the need to help the developing world mitigate the impacts to avoid adverse effects on things they care about further down the line.
The Welsh Government has been, for a number of years, working through our Wales and Africa project, in helping developing nations. It's an outstanding project. To give you just one example, in the Mbale region of Uganda, we're working with coffee farmers to plant trees. We've planted now 20 million trees since the project started. That not only helps give them a livelihood, but also stabilises their land from flash flooding that is produced by climate change, by using the trees to bind the land together. I've met a number of the coffee farmers, who are remarkable people. We need to understand the impact of our behaviour on their ability to live their lives.