The international development white paper is a drop in the ocean compared to where we need to be

By: Dorothy Guerrero
Date: 27 November 2023
Campaigns: General

Last Monday saw the launch of the UK government’s new international development white paper, the first in 14 years. The paper marked a distinct shift away from the nasty, isolationist approach which has dominated this government’s thinking in recent years, with early reports picking up on an increased ‘internationalist’- leaning ethos. This is very crucial in the current geopolitical landscape when conflicts and challenges are at a boiling point.

Indeed, just the act of affirming that a country like Britain has a duty to be part of dealing with poverty and climate change is a world away from the rhetoric of Suella Braverman and her political bedfellows. Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s foreword stating that “international development is both part of the UK’s “moral mission” and “essential for our own security and prosperity” is surely welcomed by many.

While it is good that this government sees the need to move away from outdated, paternalistic models of charity – in favour of a genuine partnership with global south governments – a return to Cameron-era development thinking doesn’t remotely begin to deal with the serious challenges we face on the global stage today.

There are policies dotted here and there which do represent a genuinely positive way forward. For example, reducing the cost of remittances, halting debt payments in the face of climate disasters, and giving southern countries a greater share of the value that comes from their critical minerals are all welcome proposals. However, in the grip of multiple intersecting major crises,  one-off policies combined with wishful thinking about the supposedly benevolent power of private capital won’t cut it.

Treating corporations and rich shareholders as equal stakeholders in discussions of global equity effectively gives them a seat at the table where instead they should be regulated by government, nationally and internationally. This is a dangerous move from multilateralism to multi-stakeholderism that will further consolidate corporate power grabs in decision making processeses.

Avoidance as usual on climate

It is particularly of note to see that despite being mere days away from COP28 and the UK being a member of the 24-seat UN Transitional Committee on Loss and Damage there is no mention of loss and damage payments in the document. Instead, it focuses only on the mitigation and adaptation pillars of climate finance. This government is also playing the avoidance-as-usual game in not making polluting oil and gas companies – syphoning off billions in profit at the expense of people and planet – pay for the UK’s climate liabilities and obligations.

Most pressingly,  2023 has  been the hottest year ever for our planet so far, with the world already experienced experiencing a global average warming of 2C in one single day for the first time ever last November, so we need to see a serious approach to the climate crisis that goes beyond mere platitudes and piecemeal policy. The UK needs to introduce a permanent polluters’ tax, with the money from this invested into the global loss and damage fund. The UK must also use its power and influence to sign onto the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would finally put an unambiguous end to new oil and gas developments for good, freeing up our time, energy and resources to be invested in implementing a just green transition.

Addressing poverty with blunt, old tools

The White Paper fails to learn the lesson that politely requesting corporations contribute to sustainable development goals as a ‘feel good’ measure will fail – we must make them pay. We have already seen an example of the abject failure that the market-led approach has led us to thus far, when Britain’s private sector-oriented development company, British International Investment (BII) was championed to supposedly engage the private sector in reducing poverty. We later discovered it lent support to private hospitals for the wealthy, to private schools allegedly committing human rights abuses, and, staggeringly, to new fossil fuel projects.

Meanwhile, we have been promised for decades that open trading systems, the kind lauded in this document, will solve global hunger – but they’ve failed, and hunger is now increasing. The fact is that poverty and environmental destruction are hard wired into our international financial system and wider economy, and the solutions our world needs will not come from merely tweaking around the edges. Instead of this government relying on private capital, international markets and techno-fixes to fill in the gaps where government policy is failing, we need to see greater public investment and better uses of our tax powers to fund this.

An exit from the climate wrecking Energy Charter Treaty which allows oil and gas companies to sue member states for taking progressive climate action is needed to make these actions financially viable – and given this government’s self-imposed November deadline has come and passed, and with EU states planning a coordinated withdrawal, there is no better time nor opportunity for the UK to make its exit.

Meanwhile, the UK must take action on corporate impunity at its root. The current lack of an effective global legal framework enables corporations to wreck the environment and trample on the rights of workers and Indigenous communities with no consequence. They can do this by listening to the voices of countries in the global south in the ongoing UN treaty negotiations on a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights, and acting upon their calls.

If we’re to have any hope of dealing with issues of global injustice, we need a greater scope of ambition than what this white paper has laid out. This would look like root and branch reform of our international institutions, a radical transformation of our trade and financial system, and a massive transfer of wealth from the richest to those with least. This might sound like a big undertaking – but in taking practical, workable steps to challenging corporate power wherever it may lie, we can get ever closer to seeing this realised.