The U.S. provides nearly a tenth of all climate finance globally, a well of funding that is at risk of drying up as the Trump administration takes aim at overseas spending.
Last year the U.S. provided an estimated $11 billion in climate finance, close to 10 percent of the global total, according to an analysis from Carbon Brief.
Much of the money came from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supplied nearly $3 billion in climate aid in 2023. Since President Trump took office, his administration has threatened to cancel nearly every project funded by the agency, with climate spending a key target.
As part of a review of overseas aid, the administration has reportedly issued a questionnaire to projects that asks, among other things, “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?”
In January, the Trump administration canceled $4 billion in pledges to a U.N. fund aimed at helping poorer nations shift away from fossil fuels and prepare for more extreme weather. And last week, it pulled out of a separate program channeling finance to poorer countries to help them move away from coal.
Reflecting on the cuts to climate finance, Ed Carr of the Stockholm Environment Institute told Carbon Brief, “From what we’ve seen so far, it looks to me like they are going to try and root out everything that they see as clearly related to climate.”
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