Campaigners have condemned the UK government’s decision to cut its international climate finance as “extremely short-sighted” and a “moral abdication,” warning the move threatens national security, abandons communities on the frontlines of climate change, and leaves “windfall profits from fossil fuels untouched”.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament that the UK’s climate finance commitment would be cut to around £6 billion or three years – roughly £2bn a year, down from £2.3bn annually under the previous five-year arrangement.
The overall aid budget has been reduced from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of gross national income by 2027, with the government citing the need to fund increased defence spending. The previous £3bn earmark for nature and forest projects has also been scrapped.
Ms Cooper said the government would “continue to invest in global health and climate action to transform lives,” and described the reforms as a shift from being a donor to an investor, drawing on British institutions including the City of London to mobilise private finance for development.
“With less investment we need to refocus to ensure it has the most impact,” she said.
Ms Cooper said climate aid spending will bolstered by an additional £6.7 billion in UK-backed climate and nature positive investments, but did not give details.
Jenny Chapman, the minister for international development, said the government was “spending less on international development, but spending it better than ever.”
However, Campaigners from the Global South said the cuts represented a historic betrayal by one of the world’s largest historical emitters.
“For the UK to retreat to a historic low of 0.3 per cent in aid is an act of climate colonialism,” said Harjeet Singh, climate activist and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.
“We in the Global South are being forced to foot the bill for a catastrophe we did not cause, while the very nation that built its wealth on the carbon of the Industrial Revolution strips away the healthcare, clean water, and education that the world’s most vulnerable need to survive it,” he told The Independent.
“You cannot claim to be a ‘climate leader’ while simultaneously withdrawing the lifelines required for our adaptation and survival,” he added.
Critics said the framing also obscured the scale of what was being lost, especially in terms of the threats it poses to the UK’s long-term interests.
“It is clear that climate finance has, to some extent, been protected as a priority within the overseas development assistance budget — it is now a larger proportion of a shrinking overall pot,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of the international programme at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think tank.
“However, cutting that budget at a time of such intense global upheaval goes against the warnings from the government’s own national security advisers and food experts, who all warn of the growing threats to our security and stability from the climate crisis.”
“We import two fifths of our food from overseas, and worsening climate change impacts hitting farmers at home and abroad are leading to shortages and higher prices on our supermarket shelves,” he said.
“Supporting the poorest nations’ efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change is also an investment in UK national security.”
The government said 70 per cent of all geographic support would be allocated to the most fragile and conflict-affected states by 2028-29, with funding protected for Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Lebanon. Some women and girls programmes and current global health commitments – including to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund – were also protected. It was previously announced that commitments to both Gavi and the Global Fund will fall by 24 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.
ActionAid UK said the women and girls pledge rang hollow without new funding to back it up. “We’re pleased to see the Foreign Secretary acknowledge that women and girls disproportionately bear the brunt of poverty, violence and conflict by promising to make them a priority — but without backing up this pledge with increased long-term funding, it rings hollow,” said co-CEOs Hannah Bond and Taahra Ghazi.
“The announcement that international climate finance will be reduced is a huge betrayal for women and girls on the frontline of the climate crisis and of this government’s own manifesto commitments on climate and gender equality — and comes at a time when urgent scaling up is needed as the frequency and scale of climate emergencies intensifies.”
The £3bn earmark for nature and forest projects has also been scrapped without an equivalent replacement.
“The UK government has confirmed it has ditched the previous commitment to spending a third of this funding on nature,” said Catherine Weller, global policy director at Fauna & Flora.
“This is a short-sighted move at a time when the nature loss and climate crises are escalating dramatically. A nature-depleted world is a more turbulent world with higher disaster risk, greater poverty, deeper climate impacts, less food and water security and a weakened economy.”
Andreas Sieber, head of global political strategy at 350.org, told The Independent the cuts were a political choice rather than a fiscal necessity. “Cutting aid to the world’s poorest is not belt-tightening, but moral abdication,” he said. “The real absurdity: this is a phantom debate. While ministers pick pockets at the bottom, they leave windfall profits from fossil fuel giants untouched, even as those same companies cash in on the price fossil fuel shocks hammering households right now.”
Earlier this week, former international development minister Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, also issued a warning to the government that it was leaving the door open for malign foreign powers such as China to fill the space left by the UK.
He said: “In an already unsafe world, cutting aid risks alienating key allies and will make improving children’s health and education in Commonwealth countries more difficult.
“We risk creating more opportunities for regimes who don’t share our values.
“Our security depends not just on a stronger military but also on building soft power so that our soldiers aren’t needed.”
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
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