Photo by Markus Spiske
The UK government is cutting hundreds of millions of pounds in climate and nature aid to developing countries, with NGOs warning that flagship ocean and biodiversity programmes, including the £500 million Blue Planet Fund, are now at risk.
Freedom of Information requests, reported by the Guardian, have revealed reductions in spending across the departments responsible for international climate finance (ICF). Programmes that were meant to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds are likely to be substantially reduced, in some cases by more than half. The government has produced no project-level spending data since 2020, making the full scale of the cuts difficult to gauge.
Among the programmes affected is the Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, originally designed to protect vital ecosystems across six regions in Africa, South America and Asia – now scaled back to just two. The Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition (Coast) programme and Prepare and Accelerate Climate Transitions (Pact) are also facing substantial cuts, with several multi-year funding commitments reduced to single-year allocations.
Blue Planet Fund under threat
The future of the Blue Planet Fund – established in the wake of David Attenborough’s landmark television series – is now uncertain. Clare Brook, CEO of the Blue Marine Foundation, told Oceanographic Magazine: “The ocean is the least funded of all of the 14 UN Sustainable Development Goals, despite being the most important ecosystem for sustaining all life on Earth. The UK’s Blue Planet Fund is one of the few donor country programmes trying to fill that gap.” She called it “extremely short-sighted” to cut funding supporting communities and nature across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific and Latin America.
Eighty-six environmental conservation organisations have written to the Prime Minister calling for an increase, not a cut, in UK climate finance.
Pledges under scrutiny
The UK pledged to spend £11.6 billion on ICF between 2021 and 2026 – a commitment made by Boris Johnson ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Reports suggest the government plans to reduce the next five-year round to £9 billion, a cut of more than a fifth. Adjusted for inflation, analysts say this represents roughly a 40% reduction in spending power since 2021, and sits in tension with an international pledge made at COP29 to triple climate finance to developing countries to $300 billion a year by 2035.
The government has also made accounting changes that allow existing aid spending to be classified as climate finance. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson told Carbon Brief that the changes bring the UK in line with internationally agreed OECD guidelines, and that meeting the £11.6 billion commitment “remains our ambition.” Critics, including NGOs and aid experts, argue the UK should have retained its former position as a leader in climate-finance accounting rather than aligning with looser methodologies used by other countries.
Wider risks
Some analysts argue the cuts carry risks beyond their direct environmental impact. A DEFRA report, drawing on input from MI5 and MI6, has warned that global ecosystem collapse poses a threat to UK national security – including through food shortages and political instability. Gareth Redmond-King of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit described cutting climate support as “self-harm” for the UK, noting the country imports around two-fifths of its food from nations vulnerable to climate extremes.
Dr Amy McDonnell, co-director of the Zero Hour campaign, said: “Rachel Reeves said she wants to protect families from turbulence beyond our borders. But the way the Government is slashing international funding to protect climate and nature does the opposite.”
The cuts come in the context of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement that the overall aid budget will be reduced from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income to fund increased defence spending – a decision the government says is necessary given the current global security environment.