Campaigners welcome UK pledge to stop funding overseas fossil fuel projects

CAFOD's 2019 campaign

Ahead of today's Climate Ambition Summit, attended by more than 70 world leaders, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the UK plans to stop funding most overseas fossil fuel projects next year.

Graham Gordon, Head of Policy at CAFOD, said: "This is a huge step forward in the UK's leadership on climate change. We welcome the Prime Minister's commitment to stop funding fossil fuels overseas as soon as possible, and before next year's COP 26 in Glasgow. We urge other governments and businesses to make ambitious commitments to keep global warming well below 1.5 degrees to protect current and future generations."

Daniel Willis, climate justice campaigner at Global Justice Now, said: "This announcement is of course welcome and demonstrates important ambition, but before we crack out the flags and champagne it is worth remembering the UK's historic role in driving carbon emissions and the urgency of the crisis we are facing."

"The Conservatives first promised to decarbonise UK Export Finance in their 2010 manifesto - in that sense this announcement is a decade overdue. And the idea that development funds should have ever been used to fund fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change and poverty in the process, is preposterous."

"To carry this momentum forward to the COP26 talks next year, it is now incumbent on the government to step up its climate finance to support a just transition to renewable energy in the global south, and to compensate for the role of the UK's global historic emissions in creating the climate crisis. Without these further steps, the talks will fall flat and we will have missed another opportunity to pursue climate justice."