An unseasonably hot September sun blazed down from a cloudless blue sky as the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, took to the stage at the Temperate House at Kew Gardens, in west London. The choice of venue was no accident. It was here in July 2021 that the then US special presidential envoy John Kerry made his landmark speech comparing the climate crisis to the ravages of the second world war and vowed to forge a global agreement to “never again come so close to the edge of the abyss”.
That speech set the tone for a successful Cop26 summit in Glasgow three months later, a high water mark of global climate diplomacy and the last time the world looked unified in trying to contain the climate crisis within the relatively safe limit of a 1.5C temperature rise.
The coalitions of countries that produced such progress have rapidly fallen apart since, and the 1.5C limit looks all but certain to be breached.
Lammy’s mission on Tuesday was to recreate that coalition and put the UK at the centre of global efforts to repair the damage done to the planet from greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of the natural world. He vowed that tackling the climate and nature crises would be “central to all the Foreign Office does”.
“[These crises are] not some discrete policy area, divorced from geopolitics, conflict and insecurity,” he said. “The threat may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or an imperialist autocrat. But it is more fundamental. It is systemic, pervasive and accelerating towards us.”
Like Kerry, Lammy presented the climate crisis as the existential threat of our time. Citing recent extreme weather, he warned: “These are not random events delivered from the heavens. They are failures of politics, of regulation and of international cooperation. These failures pour fuel into existing conflicts and regional rivalries, driving extremism and forced displacement. And it would be a further failure of imagination to hope that they will stay far from our shores.”
Also on Tuesday, the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, was addressing a conference of experts on the other side of London, arguing that economic renewal depended on resetting the power sector on a low-carbon path and generating green growth. He told the Guardian: “This is about the security of the British people. There can be no climate security for future generations unless we take international climate leadership now.”
And over at the Natural History Museum on Monday night, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, stood under the skeleton of a blue whale, declaring: “Nature and climate change are inter-related and integral to security and economic stability. The UK is back on the international stage on nature.”
The message could not be clearer: this government wants to tackle the climate and ecological crises head-on, reinvigorate green diplomacy and forge a global coalition for action before it is too late. The contrast with the previous government could scarcely be greater. Sunak skipped key international meetings, axed the post of climate envoy, made a U-turn on green policy and waged a “culture war” on the climate.
Labour will not only reappoint a climate envoy, but double up, installing for the first time a nature envoy to coordinate with governments around the world on environmental protections. The diplomatic charm offensive has already begun – Miliband hosted the president of the next UN climate summit, Cop29, in London in July, and visited Brazil, host of next year’s Cop30 summit, last month. Reed invited the president of the UN biodiversity summit, Colombia’s Susana Muhamad, to London, and next year the UK will hold a global conference on energy security.
Tone is important in international diplomacy, and Labour’s stance impressed developing country observers. Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, predicts vulnerable nations will respond positively.
“Building on its long history of supporting developing nations, the UK must deepen its commitment to helping them build resilience and tackle the harsh realities of climate change, paving the way for true global climate justice. The UK should align itself with vulnerable island nations like Vanuatu and Tuvalu, as well as fossil fuel dependent countries like Colombia, in their call for international cooperation on a just transition [away from coal, oil and gas].”
Mohamed Adow, the director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “What we need is for a country like the UK to really push for greater urgency, to show the energy transition can and must happen much faster and that support for the victims of climate change can’t be ignored. If the UK can do that it will go a long way to earning the admiration and respect of people around the world.”
The UK could also fill a vacuum in climate leadership among major developed nations, with countries such as France and Germany distracted by domestic political upheavals. Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University in Washington and a former White House climate official, said: “Far more aggressive UK climate leadership under the new Labour government will have a tremendously positive influence globally, and will specifically be crucial to emboldening US policy should Kamala Harris be elected this November.”
But for all the enthusiasm that has greeted the change of government, at home and overseas Labour will have to do more than make stirring speeches and hold cosy meetings with allies to make a real impression. Tough decisions must be made, and soon.
First, on the nature crisis, campaigners have said that more muscle is needed at home as well as abroad. Second, how far will the UK cut its emissions by 2035? Given that the UK is off track to meet its current 2030 emissions-cutting target, setting one that is more stringent but still credible will require a cross-government effort. Third, the pressing question of climate finance. Miliband has pledged to honour the UK’s current commitment of £11.6bn in climate finance by 2026, but many multiples of that will be needed, at a time when the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is cutting back across government.
Fourth, the future of oil and gas. Labour has pledged to halt new licences, but campaigners would like to see more, including more detail on how to make the transition just. Robbie MacPherson, a Churchill fellow, is urging Miliband to join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, a network of countries that are ending fossil fuel exploration and exploitation. “That would mark a positive step change in the UK’s global standing.”
Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, says there are other major decisions the UK could make quickly that would be “relatively easy wins”, such as leading negotiations over a new global treaty to cut plastic pollution, ratifying the global oceans treaty and pushing to curb deep sea mining.
“Major global summits in the autumn will be the first true testing ground of whether the Labour government can re-establish the UK as a progressive actor on the world stage … The key to success lies in ministers’ willingness to stand up to polluting industries while showing solidarity with key allies especially in the global south,” she said.
“The Labour government has already started to set the record straight through its bold policy to end new oil and gas licences. It must now build on this at Cop29 to push for more taxes on oil and gas giants to support climate-impacted communities at home and abroad and advance a global fossil fuel phase-out.”
How Labour responds to these multiple challenges will determine whether the UK’s return to the world stage on ecological diplomacy marks a true new beginning or another false start. As Lammy left the stage, the sun was still shining, but in the gardens leaves were starting to fall.
