The UK government has been accused of stepping backwards after it axed its most senior climate diplomat post.
According to reports, the last special representative for climate change, Nick Bridge, stood down recently after six years in post and is not being replaced. He was appointed by the foreign secretary and worked at a high diplomatic level to further the UK’s climate goals internationally.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said climate change remained of “utmost importance”.
But the special representative in the post from 2013-2017, Prof Sir David King, said: “This is extremely disappointing. It’s a very backward step. I do hope that the government has second thoughts and gets a powerful person into this position.”
King said that he had made 96 official country visits in the two years before the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, enabling the UK government to play a leading role in achieving the deal.
“The important thing is that the climate change situation is far worse now than in 2015,” he was quoted as saying.
Read also: Torrential rain causes major flooding in South Florida
In his reaction, Tom Burke, a former adviser to the first special representative, John Ashton, who was appointed in 2006, said: “The [loss of the post] will clearly be interpreted everywhere as a reduction in Britain’s political focus on climate change.”
Burke, who is now chair of the thinktank E3G, said “The government is strengthening [climate work] inside the structure of the FCDO department, but the fact is that without somebody who’s got the foreign secretary’s approval, and the rank of ambassador more or less, you don’t get access to the key players,”.
Speaking further, he said, “All of the really difficult problems in dealing with climate change are the politics, not the technology or economics,”. “And in order to make a difference in the politics, you have to have access to the key top-level decision makers in countries.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
