Previous perspectives

By Henry Bellingham

With less than 50 days to go before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia, I was pleased to be asked to speak at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London this week about the threat of climate change, and what this means for the Commonwealth.

Climate change is one of the greatest common challenges facing the modern world. As the minister for Africa and the overseas territories at the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I have seen firsthand the people and places that are being put in danger by the world’s inability to tackle this grave threat.

I believe that world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the Commonwealth will not be met.

Since taking office 16 months ago, I have traveled to 23 countries within my portfolio, and there is not one country among them where ordinary people are not threatened by global warming.

Although the poorest people will be worst affected by climate change, the extreme weather and floods that it can bring will affect the developed world also.

We know that climate change threatens global security. In July, the U.N. Security Council issued a presidential statement recognizing the role of climate change as a “risk multiplier,” exacerbating threats in places like Sudan, where drought and desertification brought on by climate change played a role in the conflict in Darfur.

We know also that our prosperity depends on our access to food, water and energy. Climate change threatens all of these.

The Commonwealth is a network that represents the spectrum of countries affected by climate change, in every continent on the planet, and it is a group of countries that are anchored by a shared set of values and a commitment to promoting global peace and stability.

It is my firm belief that the Com-monwealth has both a role to play in tackling climate change at a global level, and a chance to seize the opportunities of low carbon growth in trade, investment and new industries.

From business-level waste and energy-management techniques, through to large-scale, energy-efficient infrastructure planning, creative entrepreneurs are leading change, and businesses as diverse as Fosters and Vodafone have adopted voluntary emissions targets.

Strong intra-Commonwealth business groupings look to promote action, with the U.K.-India business leaders group on climate change providing an example of how this can work. We can show that climate-compatible development is possible for a whole range of economies, from smart metering in the U.K. to solar projects in Nigeria. 

On the global stage, the Common-wealth network carries weight when it speaks together. The U.N. climate conference in Durban at the end of this year matters.

The global politics of climate change are currently at low ebb – political leaders are understandably distracted by the immediacy of economic crisis. But we are coming to the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and need to build an ambitious, global, legally binding regime involving all major emitters. 

Only a legally binding approach will give businesses and investors confidence to move rapidly to low carbon to keep global temperature rise within 2 degrees.

The official theme for the Com-monwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2011, “Building National Resilience, Building Global Resilience,” aptly captures both the challenge of climate change and the strengths of the Commonwealth that make us equipped to meet that challenge. 

At CHOGM, we need to set a shared vision of what we need at Durban and beyond:  progress this year on issues that really matter to Commonwealth countries, such as delivering climate finance for developing countries, and progress towards a legally binding deal.

Henry Bellingham is the U.K.’s parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.