UK aid’s alignment with the Paris Agreement

A rapid review that examines how the UK government is aligning all its official development assistance (ODA) with the Paris Agreement, following its commitment to do so in 2019.

  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 14 October 2021
  3. Type: Rapid review
  4. Subject: Climate change and biodiversity
  5. Lead commissioner: Tamsyn Barton
  6. SDGs covered:Climate action

International Development Committee

A hearing is held by Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC) or their ICAI sub-committee for most ICAI reviews.

Watch the IDC hearing for this review.

ICAI follow-up

Approximately one year after we publish our reports, we follow up on the steps the government has taken in response to our recommendations. This process is a key link in the accountability chain, providing Parliament and the public with an account of how well government departments have responded to ICAI reviews.

Through our follow-up review, we found that the government has committed to a 2023 deadline for ensuring that all new bilateral programmes are compliant with the Paris climate agreement. However, action was inadequate on reporting publicly on progress towards aligning all official development assistance (ODA) with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (recommendation 2), building capacity and capabilities for achieving Paris alignment across government (recommendation 3) and deepening collaborative partnerships on Paris alignment with major developing countries (recommendation 4). We will therefore return to these three recommendations next year.

Read the follow-up review online or download the summary follow-up report.

Further follow-up

We published the further follow-up report in May 2024, which can be read here.

Timeline

Approach

Published 3 June 2021

Evidence gathering

Complete

Review publication

Published 14 October 2021

Government response

Published 25 November 2021

Parliamentary scrutiny

IDC hearing 22 February 2022

ICAI follow-up

Published 18 July 2023

Further follow-up

Published 16 May 2024