Britain to name climate and nature envoys amid push for global energy transition

Foreign Secretary David Lammy expected to weigh in on environmental crisis as UN summits loom

Campaigners have welcomed the new Labour government's focus on both climate and nature after Conservative ministers watered down net-zero policies. AFP

Britain will appoint new special envoys for nature and climate as it tries to rebuild its green credentials before two approaching UN summits.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy will weigh in on the environmental crisis in a speech on Tuesday as the Labour government makes climate policy part of its diplomatic “reset”.

Mr Lammy said the Labour Party is “firing the starting gun” on its pledge to create a global clean power alliance that will enable sharing knowledge and technology to help more countries reach net-zero emissions.

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The alliance also aims to help countries “leapfrog” fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy systems with global investment and finance and to speed up the supply of critical minerals needed for energy grids and energy storage.

“This government has set a landmark goal – to be the first major economy to deliver clean power by 2030,” Mr Lammy said.

“We will leverage that ambition to build an alliance committed to accelerating the clean energy transition. And today we are firing the starting gun on forming this new coalition. While some countries are moving ahead in this transition, others are being left behind.

“We need to accelerate the roll-out of renewable energy across the globe in the way that this government is doing at home.”

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Labour had previously accused Rishi Sunak's Conservative government of “squandering our leadership” on the issue after he watered down key net-zero policies. Campaigners were dismayed when the post of special representative for climate change was abolished last year.

Mr Lammy will reinstate the UK Special Representative for Climate Change role and create a new UK Special Representative for Nature to help forge partnerships between the UK and other countries.

They will report to Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband and Environment Secretary Steve Reed respectively, as well as to the Foreign Secretary.

Since taking office, the Labour Party has lifted the de facto ban on onshore wind and committed not to issue new oil and gas licences.

It has also formed a new state energy investment firm, GB Energy, to help boost renewables.

“This crisis is not some discrete policy area, divorced from geopolitics, conflict and insecurity,” the Foreign Secretary is expected to say.

“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.

“Today, I am committing to you that while I am Foreign Secretary, action on the climate and nature crisis will be central to all the Foreign Office does. This is critical given the scale of the threat, but also the scale of the opportunity.”

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The new government has also promised to tackle what it calls a “nature emergency” of polluted rivers and seas. A delegation will attend UN biodiversity talks in Colombia next month before Azerbaijan hosts the Cop29 climate summit in November.

Appointing new envoys for both climate and nature would be a welcome signal of the new government's “desire to engage internationally”, Ben Reynolds, director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy in the UK, told The National. He said the two issues “have to be dealt with hand in hand”.

“The international summits in the coming months on climate and biodiversity will show whether the new government is able to match its ambitions not just to be part of these conversations, but to lead them,” Mr Reynolds said.

Diplomatic push

Although Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is in charge of promoting clean power at home, Mr Lammy has sought to use Britain's diplomatic clout to persuade countries such as India to take more aggressive action on climate change.

David King, a former holder of the climate envoy role, told The National last year that his well-funded, round-the-world diplomacy in the run-up to the 2015 Paris climate deal made him “convinced we were going to get an agreement”.

“Without those bilateral negotiations, I really doubt that would have happened, and without the money that I had in my pocket,” Mr King said. He described the post's abolition as “extremely disappointing” and a “very backward step”.

Mr Miliband has said he will personally lead the UK's negotiating team at Cop29. Mr Lammy and the Foreign Office will push for ambitious pledges on climate finance and reduced emissions at Cop29, the department said.

A second Labour energy minister, Kerry McCarthy, told the UK Parliament last week that raising money for developing countries would be Britain's top priority in Azerbaijan.

She said a Labour delegation at Cop28 in the UAE last year found it a “depressing experience” because activists from vulnerable countries kept asking whether Britain had “completely abdicated its sense of international leadership”.

Britain's King Charles III, a long-time environmentalist, has also hosted the presidents of Cop28, Cop29 and Cop30, including Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, who was also Cop28 president, as preparations for the Baku step-up.