UK accused of ‘cutting corners’ on climate spending as El Nino looms

The UK government is “cutting corners” on its commitments to provide climate aid, MPs have warned in a new report, just as a record-breaking ‘super’ El Niño weather event begins to intensify extreme weather and humanitarian crises around the world.

The International Development Committee said that cuts to the UK’s aid budget - which will result in the UK’s bilateral aid relationship essentially ending with a large group of countries - have undermined its ability to provide meaningful support to some of the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries.

Its report on “International Climate Finance” - a stream of foreign aid that rich countries are obligated to provide under the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement - finds that successive reductions in the aid budget have damaged the UK’s ability to meet its climate commitments “in a meaningful, transparent and credible way”.

MPs also criticised changes to the way climate finance is accounted for, which allow existing humanitarian aid to be counted towards the UK’s climate spending commitments.

They said the government had prioritised maintaining headline spending figures “as opposed to striving to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes”.

Sarah Champion, chair of the committee, said climate change was already “swiftly reversing development progress in vulnerable countries”, and warned that El Niño could worsen water insecurity and push more people into acute food shortages.

“Rather than striving to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes, the government has been cutting corners to maintain headline climate spending commitments,” she said.

Catherine Pettengell, executive director of the Climate Action Network UK, which represents 45 civil society organisations working on climate, added: “Current ICF commitments fall far short of the UK’s fair share of the finance needed by low- and middle-income countries to tackle the climate crisis not of their making.

“Today’s IDC report must serve as a wake-up call to this new government on the extent to which UK credibility and commitments have been eroded and undermined by cuts and creative accounting.”

The government has committed to spending around £6bn of foreign aid on climate finance over the three financial years from 2026-27 to 2028-29. This is a cut from the previous contribution of £11.6bn from the aid budget over the five years from 2021/22 to 2025/26.

The government has said, however, that it intends to keep increasing climate finance year-on-year by leveraging more private capital.

While most agree that foreign aid alone will never provide enough money alone to pay the vast costs of addressing the climate crisis, aid groups warn that it is extremely difficult to develop a “business case” to drive private investment into measures required to adapt to the climate crisis in the poorest parts of the world.

The Independent has also found that aid cuts mean that at least one aid project funding climate adaptation in Bangladesh has ended early, with the implementing partner warning that this has seriously undermined the work they have been trying to do in the community.

The findings from the International Development Committee also come as this year’s El Niño weather event - a natural climate phenomenon exacerbated by climate change that will disrupt rainfall and temperatures around the world - is projected set to push 50 million more people into life-threatening ‘acute’ hunger.

The government says that programmes funded with UK climate finance have supported more than 137 million people to cope with climate impacts, and provided 89 million people with improved access to clean energy.

The International Development Committee recommended that ministers now use additional public and private finance to compensate for the constraints created by cuts to the aid budget, and ensure the UK meets its climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

A UK government spokesperson said: “Climate change and nature loss pose a real and significant threat to global security and prosperity. That is why the UK is leading action on climate and nature, and prioritising climate finance in its aid budget.

"Our international work to reform the global financial system will make our investments work harder and go further whilst also empowering countries to finance their own development, climate and nature goals, reducing reliance on aid.”

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project