Mr. Simon Murtagh:

The 2% figure is actually 1.7%. It comes from Oxfam's research done through its systems in the Pacific and Africa on where climate finance actually reaches. I included the findings in a submission to our climate unit between our departments. I can provide the committee with the submission, which sets out where the research comes from. More broadly, it is important to state that at Oxfam, we have grave concerns about the quality of climate finance over the past decade. We publish shadow climate finance reports. I spoke to this committee last year from COP26 in Glasgow. I appealed for us to reach the $100 billion climate finance goal as an international community, but in fact, that goal is apocryphal. Our research shows that perhaps only up to 20% of it can be considered really effective aid. That is why there is such a focus here today on effectiveness and accountability. That applies at all levels. It applies at the highest level, where money goes to big multilateral funds like the green climate fund, GCF, which has been mentioned, or UN funds. Looking at our climate finance, it is on record that in 2020 we doubled the amount that went to multilateral funds. That was said to be down to the Covid pandemic, and therefore we could not give as much money to bilateral funds. We must look at both the high levels of accountability where the money goes from states, as Ms Curran said, and at the ground levels, to see that it is effective and reaches small holders who, we have found, it is not reaching. Many of them are women's rights organisations. That is where the research comes from. We really need to get it right. We cannot repeat the mistakes that have been made in climate finance. That is why we have set out these principles of equity and effectiveness today.

Finally, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, was mentioned in the opening statement. Barbados has really been an inspirational country and she has been an inspirational figure in this area. Under the Bridgetown Agenda, she has really shown where we can introduce a transformational fiscal stimulus to make a loss and damage fund that would transform the whole area across the Global South. That is a wider agenda in which I know, for example, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications is interested. We could so something new and much more effective across this whole area.