The UK plans to slash its aid to poor countries stricken by the climate crisis by more than a fifth, the Guardian has learned, despite promises to increase assistance and warnings from campaigners that the move will cost lives and livelihoods.
Ministers plan to cut climate finance for the developing world from £11.6bn over the past five years to £9bn in the next five. In real terms, accounting for inflation, this would represent a cut of about 40% in spending power since 2021, when the £11.6bn budget was agreed.
The slashing of climate aid, imposed by the Treasury, is planned despite recent warnings from the UK’s spy chiefs that the collapse of ecosystems such as the Amazon or the Congo would inflict serious damage on the UK’s national security, including soaring food prices and the risk of war.
It comes just a year after the UK and other rich countries promised to triple global climate finance to the poor world to $300bn (£220bn) a year by 2035, in recognition of the disasters countries are already experiencing. Although that deal did not specify how much must come from each, a reduction from the UK will make the total harder to reach.
Mohamed Adow, the director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “For vulnerable countries, UK climate finance isn’t an abstract budget line – it’s the difference between resilience and disaster. Cutting it at this moment will cost lives and livelihoods.”
Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from the Paris agreement and its parent treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and has scrapped the US’s climate finance targets. Adow said: “If the UK breaks its commitments, it gives cover for others to do the same, with devastating consequences for global climate action.”
