Sunak to attend COP27 in climate summit U-turn
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak will attend next week’s COP27 summit in a last-minute U-turn just days before the start of the international climate conference in Egypt.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Sunak said he believed there was “no long-term prosperity without action on climate change”, and would be travelling to the meeting that will bring together world leaders to discuss the climate crisis.
Sunak had originally said he would not have time to fly to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh because of domestic priorities, including the key Autumn Statement in mid-November. A Number 10 spokesperson said on Wednesday that the prime minister had decided to attend “following discussions” with chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
Sunak’s initial snub — just a year after the UK hosted last year’s COP26 conference — had raised questions about his commitment to climate. The Egyptian COP27 president-designate said on Tuesday that more than 100 heads of state and government would attend the summit, which starts next week, with US president Joe Biden expected to arrive late due to the country’s midterm elections.
The UK’s outgoing COP president Alok Sharma, who will hand over the role to his Egyptian counterpart on Sunday, told the FT he was delighted that Sunak would be attending the conference. “It will be an opportunity to reinforce the UK’s commitment to international and domestic climate leadership,” he said.
The political turbulence in Britain in recent months has called into question the government’s ability to lead on climate policy internationally.
Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US, said it should have been a given that the British prime minister would attend COP. “We shouldn’t even be talking about [whether Sunak would go].”
The recent quick succession of UK governments have adopted divergent climate policies. Boris Johnson, a vocal champion of green issues during COP26, was forced out of power in July. His successor, Liz Truss, promised to keep the UK’s legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but alarmed green campaigners on several other fronts.
Truss announced plans to lift the ban on fracking in England and to approve new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, decisions that campaigners said were incompatible with the UK’s net zero objective.
Sunak has since reversed the decision on fracking, but the government remains committed to expanding the production of fossil fuels in the North Sea. The prime minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday that oil and gas companies were “an important source of transition fuel”.
In his first reshuffle, the new prime minister demoted both Sharma and climate minister Graham Stuart from the cabinet, in a move that critics took as a signal that Sunak would push environmental issues down the agenda.
Sharma told the FT that the “onus was on the government to demonstrate” how policies, such as more North Sea extraction, were “consistent” with the net zero commitment.
“I’m not aware that on the oil and gas licensing that is there,” he said. “That’s a question for ministers . . . At the end of the day, we will be judged, the government will be judged on the delivery of the policies and commitments that we’ve made.”
The outgoing COP president also highlighted the challenging geopolitical context that climate negotiators faced this year. The energy crisis fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis have raised concerns that countries may backpedal on green commitments.
The world could not afford “any backsliding” on climate commitments, said Sharma. “At the G20 climate and energy ministers’ meeting, there was backsliding . . . If a country makes a commitment that needs to be delivered upon.”
While green groups on Wednesday welcomed Sunak’s decision to attend COP, they said the UK had “work to do” to restore its reputation as a leader on climate.
“It would have been a remarkable own goal for the prime minister to miss this year’s UN climate talks,” said Rachel Kennerley, international climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “The UK government has a lot of work to do to rebuild its climate reputation.”
Campaigners will be closely watching a decision by the government on whether to grant planning permission for a new coal mine that is expected in December.
The UK government “doesn’t seem to realise that its international credibility as a pragmatic partner has taken a severe beating over the past six years, and every one of these episodes doesn’t help”, Kyte said, referring to the damage to Britain’s reputation post-Brexit.
She cited the example of the decision to cut the UK’s international aid budget from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent in 2020, some of which funds climate action in vulnerable countries.
Ed Miliband, shadow climate secretary, said Sunak had been shamed into attending the conference by a “torrent of disbelief”.
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.
Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here