We must not forget the climate crisis – Jamie Livingstone

It is a cruel irony that those paying the highest price have done little to cause the damage, writes Jamie Livingstone

Cecilia drawing water from a shallow well where she waited for hours to fill up her 20 litre bucket.

The climate emergency hasn’t gone away.

While Covid-19 has stolen global leaders’ attention, climate-induced tragedies have continued. People’s homes and lives are still being swept away by extreme flooding while elsewhere rivers are running dry, plunging countless people into starvation.

For those not facing such suffering it’s all too easy to forget about the devastating impacts. But people who live in the world’s poorest countries certainly haven’t forgotten.

Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland

For people like Cecilia, who’s from Zimbabwe, the climate crisis isn’t a distant threat. In Siyeni village, where she’s from, water is becoming harder and harder to find. Boreholes are running dry and people have to walk long distances in scorching temperatures to find water.

Cecilia showed my Oxfam colleagues the shallow well she’d dug. “I’ve waited nearly five hours for this water source to fill up this 20 litre bucket,” she said. “On a bad day, waiting hours can be over eight.” Gender inequalities mean it is often women who are walking further to collect water and being the last to eat during climate-related food shortages.

The cruel irony is that those paying the highest price – people like Cecilia – have done little to cause the climate crisis. It’s the world’s rich, including here in Scotland, who caused this emergency, and continue to make it worse. As new Oxfam’s analysis shows, the emissions of the richest one per cent of people globally between 1990 and 2015 were more than double the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population put together.

Rich countries have a moral duty to act, and to act quickly.

Late next year, representatives from 195 countries arrive in Glasgow for landmark UN climate talks. As President of the talks, known as COP26, the UK Government has a huge responsibility to secure a strong outcome – this requires immediate and sustained diplomatic effort.

Ahead of COP, all countries are required to submit revised climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). Their level of ambition will determine the success or failure of those talks on the banks of the Clyde.

But, as home to the host city, the Scottish Government also has a unique opportunity to make Scotland’s voice heard for global climate action.

Encouragingly, it can point to legal targets which are amongst the strongest anywhere. This includes, by 2045, only producing the volume of emissions we can remove from the atmosphere through activities like maintaining peatlands – so-called ‘net-zero’. And, given the need for fast action, our 2030 target to cut emissions by 75 per cent compared to 1990 is particularly significant. The European Union is currently aiming for just 50-55 per cent.

The Scottish Government must use our strong targets to champion global ambition.

But we cannot be complacent either: while Scotland’s emissions have halved since 1990, our 2018 annual target was missed and emissions began to creep upwards again.

Recent commitments, including to spend £1.6 billion on improving the heat and energy efficiency of our homes and buildings over five years, suggests a ramping up of action.

But, as one of the first countries to industrialise, Scotland has a long-lasting debt to the countries most affected by our actions, and this debt is far from being repaid.

The Scottish Government’s innovative Climate Justice Fund supports the world’s poorest communities to cope but has remained frozen at just £3m a year since 2016; losing value despite spiralling climate devastation.

The Government must act on long-standing calls for the Fund to match the International Development Fund – currently £10 million a year, around 0.02 per cent of Scotland’s £50 billion annual budget. Scotland should send the strongest possible international message by increasing the Climate Justice Fund through progressive taxes on high emitters, high earners, or wealth.

Both the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council must also show how they plan to fulfil their promises to support impacted communities influence the Glasgow talks.

And every political party must use May’s Scottish election to demonstrate to the people of Scotland, and a watching world, that they have not forgotten the climate emergency and that our commitment runs deeper than ambitious long-term promises.

Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland.