Yorkshire-born UK High Commissioner to Pakistan Jane Marriott launches new climate change initiative

Now serving as the UK’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, Jane Marriott is spearheading a new climate finance programme to showcase British renewable energy expertise and help the country’s transition to a low-carbon economy.

Doncaster-born Jane, 48, has operated in many of the world’s most hazardous trouble spots including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and was once informed she was top of an Al-Qaeda hitlist in Yemen.

But Jane – who has also served in Kenya and the US - insisted: “I’ve encountered a few hairy moments in the course of my career, but they pale into insignificance compared to the threat climate change poses the whole of humanity.

“I started this job shortly after Pakistan faced devastating floods in 2022. They submerged a third of the country, killed over 1,700 people and left over 2.1million people homeless, so the impact of climate change is terrifying.

“It might sound strange but when I’ve been caught up in a security situation such as a rocket attack or embassy siege, the fear you feel in that moment is relatively fleeting, and relatively few people might be affected.

“But if we don’t take serious action to combat climate change then it is game over. Millions will die, millions will migrate, and everyone across the world will suffer.

“It’s exactly why the UK is looking to strengthen our leading role to help partners like Pakistan adapt to the challenges posed by the climate crisis.

“It is about sharing our joint expertise as part of the UK’s work delivering green growth across the globe to ensure a liveable planet for future generations.”

Jane welcomed Minister for the Middle East Hamish Falconer to Islamabad last week to announce a first-of-its-kind £108million programme, delivered in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), investing in local businesses to help them meet the significant investments needed to adapt to the threats Pakistan faces from climate change.

She explained: “Data analysis by my team in partnership with the Government of Pakistan has found that Pakistan’s economy faces a $1.2trillion hit to the economy by 2050 if it doesn’t urgently build climate resistance.

“Our new programme will help Pakistan combat its climate vulnerabilities by securing investment in new technologies, business models and solutions.”

Despite not flying on an aeroplane until she was aged 23, she has travelled to over 50 countries since joining the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) in 2000.

Jane took up her new role in Pakistan in July 2023.

And she said: “When I first started in Pakistan friends were a bit concerned because of terrorism on the border, but if you follow the FCDO’s travel advice this country has so much to offer.

“There are around 100,000 Brits living in Pakistan at any given moment and 1.6million Brits with Pakistani heritage – 300,000 in Yorkshire alone.

“It’s something that really attracted me to the post. There’s that shared magic of having a kebab on the famous Burns Road in Karachi or the Sheesh Mahal in West Yorkshire.

“We’d love more people to be visiting as tourists and because there are so many natural links, we want to grow greater trade relationships to help both countries prosper.

“I met some trade delegates who said their families were absolutely terrified about visiting Pakistan.

“In reality, if they follow our travel advice, the biggest problem for any delegates visiting is how much meat there is in the diet and not putting on too much weight.”

Straight-talking Jane helped blaze the trail for a wave of female diplomats who have played a major role in improving diversity and modernising the FCDO.

The Foreign Office banned woman from diplomatic roles until 1946 and required women to resign if they got married until 1973.

The first married female ambassadors were not appointed until 1987 - eight years after Margaret Thatcher the UK’s first female Prime Minister.

Women now lead 41 per cent of the UK’s missions around the world and Jane is our first female High Commissioner to Pakistan – championing women and girls rights in a country which struggles with issues such as girls education, forced marriage and gender based violence.

Jane said: “I make it clear that true equality is the goal and that men are allies. We do not want the balance tipped too far either way in favour of either sex.

“Colleagues in their 20s are horrified when I relay tales of what the Foreign Office culture was like when I first joined.

“I was frequently the only woman in the room… and the one expected to do the tea and coffee, which I largely didn’t.

“There was often that classic thing of saying something everyone ignored until a bloke made the exact same point a few minutes later and got all the praise for a good idea.

“A British military Colonel once introduced me, only partly tongue in cheek, with, “This is Jane. She sits in the back of the wagon and looks pretty’.

“To be fair, a fortnight later as militia mortars rained down around us, he turned to his successor and said, ‘This is Jane. Always do what she tells you’.”

Jane has more than proven herself in some tricky situations, including when protestors stormed the British Embassy in Tehran in 2011.

She said: “Evacuating the Embassy in Tehran was a pretty intense 24 hours. It felt exactly like the film Argo about the 1979 protests.

“A bunch of guys came over the wall and the next thing the Embassy was on fire. The Ambassador made the call to evacuate the building. The streets were eerie and quiet until these two local intelligence officials came running up and said ‘You need to move. There’s a very big crowd of people who will kill you on their way’.

“I was like ‘No s***, Sherlock’. On our way to safety there was a moment where we bumped into a mob of about 20 but thankfully the two intelligence officials made it clear that having 11 diplomats kicked to death was not what they wanted.“

Jane’s decision not to wear a hijab in Yemen was appreciated by local women – but catapulted her to top of an Al-Qaeda hitlist.

She explained: “People expected me to be horrified but I was like ‘Yes’ because I’d beaten the American Ambassador and there’s no point being in second place.

“I’d actually had good relations with the Houthis but once the Iranian influence took hold things quickly changed.

“We had no option but to evacuate the Embassy when it got to the point where Houthis in pick-up trucks attempted to box my car in and squeeze us off the road.

“Our drivers were having none of it. It was all over in 30 seconds and you were left thinking ‘That could have been hairy’.”

She added: “Far hairier was dodging celebratory gunfire after Iraq beat Syria at football in ????. Bullets were coming down as everyone ran for cover. I think something like 32 people got killed that night. No-one ever seems to think what goes up must come down.”

Jane thinks her parents back in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, have got used to her foreign adventures.

She said: “Dad’s more of a worrier than mum. I remember him having concerns about a job I’d got in Vienna in 2003. He was like ‘I’m not sure about Vienna. It’s awfully far away.’

“One day I called up asking to speak to mum. He insisted ‘No, you can speak to me’ so I said, ‘The good news is I am not going to Vienna’.

“He said ‘Thank God. Wait, where are you going?’ and I was like ‘Err, actually I’m going to Iraq, dad. In ten days time’. The phone just dropped, and I heard him shouting to my mum ‘Come and talk to your daughter’.

“I don’t think my mum was all that surprised because I’d grown up wanting to be a war correspondent since seeing Kate Adie report from Tiananmen Square in 1989.

”But they appreciate that this job gives me the real opportunities to make a difference on issues such as climate change.”