Sustainable development in a changing climate

The House of Commons' International Development Committee has published this report in June 2009, summary as follows:

Climate change threatens to destroy gains made in poverty reduction in many developing countries. Substantial funding will be needed to help poor countries tackle climate change. The Government should make clear that it stands by the principle of new, additional and predictable funding support for climate change responses in developing countries. Climate change should be central to the Department for International Development's (DFID's) work in developing countries. However, we found that limited progress had been made on ensuring that climate change informs all policy decisions.

On the subject of air freighted fresh produce the report says: "There is a danger that steps taken by consumers in the UK to reduce their contribution to carbon emissions may lead them to avoid buying produce from developing countries in the mistaken belief that air-freighted food and flowers necessarily have a higher carbon footprint. We believe that consumers need accurate information about the way products have been grown as well as transported. Labelling imported fresh produce to show total carbon emissions for the whole production cycle would be a useful tool to enable consumers to make informed choices about the goods that they buy. We believe the UK Government should conduct research on how such a scheme might be introduced and carry out an assessment of the potential benefits to producers in developing countries.

"The Government could also consider paying to offset the air freight emissions of horticultural products from developing countries. Ideally this would be done through funding sustainable mitigation projects in the exporting countries, which would provide poor countries with a double dividend of supporting their export earnings and contributing to their domestic low-carbon development. This proposal could be a worthwhile use of funds, particularly if it could be counted against compliance with any financial commitment made as part of a new global agreement reached at the Copenhagen summit. We therefore recommend that the Government explore its feasibility prior to the Copenhagen conference and report back to us on its conclusions."