The UK has frozen “non-essential” new international aid spending within the summer, in a move prone to hit climate programmes in developing countries.
The finance ministry’s chief secretary Simon Clarke told the foreign ministry last week to limit new payments over concerns the UK will expend a lot more than its self-imposed limit of 0.5% of national income, the Financial Times reported.
Like many countries, the UK boosted aid to Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia in February. Because the war was unexpected, this aid wasn't planned along with other budgets have been raided to cover it.
Clare Shakya, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the finance ministry’s latest move was “extremely concerning”.
“While there'll always be pressures on the national budget, we can’t manage to kick the can down the road on global warming,” she said. “At any given time of crippling food shortages, conflict and in the midst of the climate crisis, making unexpected cuts in this manner may have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods and will seriously undermine the rely upon the UK government.”
While the fall-out from Clarke’s memo is yet to be felt, Shakya said, previous cuts to aid spending have damaged climate programmes.
In November 2023, then finance minister Rishi Sunak announced the united kingdom would scrap its commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid. He replaced this with a 0.5% target “until the fiscal situation allows”.
Among the projects whose budgets were cut as a result was “Tomorrow’s Cities”, which promotes resiliences to climate disasters in Nairobi, Kathmandu, Quito and Istanbul.
Shakya asserted the programmes likely to be cut were those whose budgets are actually up for renewal. “You see fairly good programmes come to an end simply because, at that time that the cut is being looked for, it is an easy place to make a cut,” she said.
As food prices and hunger rise and also the war in Ukraine continues, aid spending has been stretched thin around the globe.
In Germany, finance minister Christian Lindner has proposed cutting the expansion ministry’s slice from the aid budget by 12%.
German development minister Svenja Schulze said “this amount won't be enough to pay for crop failures and prevent famine”.
Lindner also halved Germany’s contribution around the world Food Programme, which recently suspended food assistance in South Sudan, citing deficiencies in funds.
Germanwatch analyst David Ryfisch said the cuts within the ministry’s budget can lead to cuts to climate finance. “At minimum,” he told Climate Home, “it entirely contradicts Germany’s aspiration to increase climate finance from budgetary sources to EUR6bn by 2025. For that, it would need to start increasing.”
Shakya said that Scandinavian development officials had feared they'd need to make cuts due to the fight against Ukraine but to date spending levels have been sustained.
US climate finance grew by less than developing countries hoped for in 2023. The Biden administration got $1bn approved through Congress, just $0.4bn a lot more than the Trump administration.
