Developing Countries: Climate Change
International Development

Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion, Green)

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent assessment she has made of the potential effect of drought, flooding and other extreme weather events on her Department's objectives of alleviating hunger and poverty in the global South under a scenario of (a) less than a and (b) more than a two degree increase in global temperatures; and if she will make a statement.

Alan Duncan (Minister of State, International Development; Rutland and Melton, Conservative)

The 2011 independent Humanitarian and Emergency Response Review (HERR) commissioned by DFID included an assessment of the impact of extreme weather events. It predicted that 375 million people a year will be affected by climate-related disasters by 2015. DFID has also reviewed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”.

The IPPC report provides evidence that climate change has already affected the magnitude and frequency of some extreme events, and that we can expect the severity and frequency of these events, including storms and droughts, to be affected by climate change. It also predicts these impacts will be greater with higher global temperatures. Thus the impacts of extreme events are likely to be greater in a world where global temperatures increase by more than two degrees than one where temperature increases are less. Without action these extreme weather events will impact on DFID's objectives of alleviating hunger and poverty. This is why the coalition Government has made adaptation and disaster risk reduction a priority for the UK's International Climate Fund.