Oh, did we forget to say we wanted the money back?
What can you do but shake your head in wonderment at the debacle over the UK government’s £800m Environmental Transformation Fund? As John Vidal reported in the Guardian on Saturday, the initial idea seemed such a good one:
The UK environmental transformation fund was announced by the prime minister to international acclaim in November 2007, and was widely expected to be made in direct grants to countries experiencing extreme droughts, storms and sea level rise associated with climate change
But now, a small detail has emerge: the Fund’s cash is in fact loans rather than aid – so they’ll have to be repaid with interest by developing countries. Odd, then, that Gordon Brown forgot to say so when trumpeting the Fund in his climate speech last year, and that International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander also overlooked it when he came to CIC to speak on climate change last month.
As the Guardian reports, it seems the problem lies not with DFID or Defra, but with the Treasury, which overruled both departments. This makes it astonishing that Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling should have co-authored an FT comment piece on the Fund with US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson back in February – which said nothing whatsoever about loans, instead giving a clear impression that the money would be given as grant aid.