The British government plans to appoint a special envoy for nature for the first time as Foreign Secretary David Lammy seeks to put the UK at the center of global efforts to tackle the world’s environmental crises, the Guardian has learned.
Labor will also appoint a new climate envoy after the Tories scrapped the role more than a year ago, in a move that will dismay foreign governments and climate campaigners.
Lammy, who met Sir David Attenborough this month to talk about the global response to the climate and nature crisis, will make a major intervention on the subject earlier this week.
He says: “The threat of climate change may not be as pressing as a terrorist or an autocrat. But it is more fundamental. It’s systemic, pervasive, and accelerating toward us.”
Citing recent extreme weather in the Amazon, Syria and Africa and the devastation caused by Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean, Lammy says global political leaders must take responsibility before climate failure can further exacerbate conflict and migration.
“These are not random events delivered from heaven. They are failures of policy, regulation and international cooperation,” he says. “These failures add fuel to existing conflicts and regional rivalries, fuel extremism and forced displacement. And it would be another failure of imagination to hope they stay far from our shores.’
Ed Miliband, the minister for energy security and net zero, has already launched an international climate charm offensive, inviting the president of the next UN climate summit, Mukhtar Babayev, from Azerbaijan, to the UK in the summer. Last month he visited Brazil, which this year chairs the G20 group of developed and developing countries and will host the UN Cop30 climate summit next year.
The UK also hopes to present strengthened commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at this November’s Cop29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, will also this week announce close cooperation with Colombia, the host of October’s UN Cop16 summit on nature. It will reaffirm the Government’s commitments to protect 30% of the UK’s land by 2030 and to strike a global deal on nature.
The appointment of the two envoys pleased campaigners who were concerned that the last government had reduced the UK’s role in international climate and nature talks. Rishi Sunak has turned down key climate meetings, while the Prime Minister and the cancellation of the role of climate envoy were seen by many as a step backwards.
Chris Venables, director of policy at the Green Alliance think tank, said: “This sends a strong signal to the international stage that Labor is serious about the environmental agenda, after the lackluster performance of the last government.”
Rebecca Newsom, head of policy at Greenpeace UK, said: “The climate crisis and the destruction of nature are two of the biggest global threats we face. So the appointment of a special envoy to deal with each sends a clear signal that both are foreign policy priorities of this government. And with major UN conferences on climate, biodiversity and plastics only a few weeks away, there is a lot of diplomatic work to be done.”
The two new envoys will work closely under the leadership of the Foreign Secretary and with Miliband and Reed. They will help coordinate intergovernmental work on international nature and climate issues between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
None of the appointments have yet been decided, but the Guardian understands the government is working to shortlist each role. The role of nature has been considered by several prominent figures, including Tony Juniper, chairman of Natural England and former head of Friends of the Earth; Tanya Steele, Executive Director of WWF UK; and Edward Davey, a former aide to King Charles during his time as Prince of Wales who is now at the World Resources Institute.
In a sign of Labour’s desire to keep environmental issues between the political parties, unlike the last Conservative government which waged a “culture war” on the issue, former Tory minister Alok Sharma is believed to have been initially considered. climatic role. However, he excluded himself. The Guardian understands that another prominent Green ex-Tory, Chris Skidmore, a former car net zero under Boris Johnson, is also out.
Michael Jacobs, an academic who was formerly an adviser to Gordon Brown and helped broker the global deal at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, also ruled out.
Some of the candidates for the role of climate envoy believed to be still under possible consideration are Nick Mabey, co-founder of the E3G think tank; Rachel Kyte, formerly the World Bank’s top climate official and now a professor at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government; and an internal civil servant candidate.
Two previous climate envoys – Nick Bridge, who was ousted by Rishi Sunak despite helping to oversee a successful Cop26 in 2021; and John Ashton, who held the post from 2006 to 2012 – also held civil service roles.
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