A £1.5bn pledge by Gordon Brown to help poor countries cope with climate change will drain funds from existing overseas aid programmes to improve health, education and water supplies, the government has admitted.
The move, revealed in an email exchange between campaigners and an official at the Department for International Development (DfiD), appears to undermine repeated promises that the money would be additional to existing aid commitments.
Tim Jones, policy officer at the World Development Movement (WDM), said: "The UK government has publicly said 90% of money for tackling climate change should be additional to existing aid commitments. In private, all of the UK's climate change money is being diverted from international aid. The UK has a moral responsibility to put new money into tackling both development and climate change."
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 10:10 | 
Written by Sue | 
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