Parliamentary reporter @TrinderMatt

WORLD leaders should align anti-poverty and climate strategies to avoid missing key targets for both, a joint report from a cross-party group of parliamentarians and academics said today.

MPs and Lords in the all-party parliamentary group on the United Nations global goals for sustainable development joined University of Sussex researchers to warn that the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated global poverty and also hit funding to address it. 

But inequality and the undermining of global development goals could be worsened still further if policies designed to achieve climate targets are “not managed with care,” they stressed. 

The intervention comes amid warnings from the UN that the world is failing on key targets to address climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs), which include efforts to tackle poverty and improve education and healthcare.

The group argued that policies which aim to address both problems are not always equitable. 

For example, the development of hydroelectricity as a lower-carbon form of energy has led to human rights violations against indigenous people as the construction of new dams has destroyed their ancestral homelands. 

But a range of policies have “significant potential” to solve both poverty and the climate crisis, the report said, including substituting traditional smoky cooking stoves with energy-efficient and clean varieties and constructing “green” buildings.

It demanded that national governments work together with business and civil groups to ensure that the maximum benefit can be gained from any new policies being introduced. 

Labour peer and group chairman Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale said: “The urgent action required to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions must not make our world more unequal.

“We need governments to combine their strategies for climate action with their targets for leaving no-one behind.”

University of Sussex sustainability research programme director Professor Joseph Alcamo said: “The world is slipping behind on key targets to protect the climate and advance development, but we can catch up by aligning the climate and SDG agendas.

“This report provides evidence of dozens of policies that advance both climate goals and other [SDGs].”

The UN Cop26 climate change conference, which aims to limit global warning to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, is due to begin in Glasgow on October 31.