Ongoing cuts by rich nations to foreign aid are threatening their pledge to double finance by the end of this year to help developing countries adapt to climate change, a new report has warned.
Adaptation finance provided by developed countries is expected to decrease as a result of reductions in overseas development spending and may only reach $26 billion in 2025, according to projections by NGOs Oxfam and the CARE Climate Justice Centre.
That would be far short of the estimated $40 billion needed to honour the promise developed countries made four years ago at COP26 in Glasgow to double their adaptation finance from 2019 levels.
Even if achieved, the goal represents a small fraction of the estimated $215 billion-$387 billion a year that developing nations need to become more resilient in a warming world.
International adaptation funding needs to grow sixfold to $12 billion a year for small island developing states (SIDS), which face an existential threat from rising seas, according to a separate report by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) out this week.
Foreign aid slashed
Resilience-boosting interventions in poorer countries have historically relied to a large extent on foreign aid, which is now shrinking as wealthy donors redirect cash to other areas, such as defence. Most notably, the Trump administration has dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – but other wealthy donors, including Germany and France, have also slashed aid spending in 2025.
Overall, overseas development aid (ODA) is expected to decline by between 9% and 17% in 2025, on top of a 9% drop in 2024, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
John Norbo, a senior climate advisor at CARE Denmark, said aid cuts in wealthy countries leave “the poorest to pay the price, sometimes with their lives”.
“Rich countries are failing on climate finance and they have nothing like a plan to live up to their commitments to increase support,” he added. “COP30 must deliver justice, not another round of empty promises.”
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Brazil’s COP30 presidency has promised that adaptation will be a “central theme” of the summit.
Governments are expected to agree on a list of around 100 indicators to track resilience to climate change as part of the Global Goal on Adaptation, while also being encouraged – along with the private sector – to help fund measures in National Adaptation Plans – whether rural water management, resilient health systems, or city heat assessments.
“We are expecting – and stand ready – to support all countries that are willing to use COP30 as a platform to show their leadership on adaptation finance, on adaptation planning, on adaptation delivery,” Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas, programme director for the COP30 presidency, told a recent event at Climate Week in New York.
But it is still unclear whether governments will agree at COP30 on any new dedicated financial target to replace the expiring one. The world’s poorest nations – represented in the climate negotiations by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group – are calling for a fresh commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2030 on 2022 levels.
Loans for adaptation add to debt burdens
The research by Oxfam and CARE also found that a significant share of climate finance – including for adaptation – is still provided as loans that, the campaigning groups say, burden developing countries with debt for a crisis that they did not cause.
For the 2021-2022 period, loans made up on average 41% of adaptation finance provided directly by wealthy governments and around three-quarters of adaptation funding disbursed by multilateral institutions such as development banks, the report found.
The NGOs estimated that developing countries will have to pay back between 30% and 50% more of the money they were lent in 2022 for adaptation programmes as a result of interest repayments.
For Oxfam’s climate policy lead Nafkote Dabi, this represents a form of “crisis profiteering”. “Rich countries are treating the climate crisis as a business opportunity, not a moral obligation,” she said.
‘Running out of time’
France, Japan, Italy and Spain provided most of their climate finance over the 2021-2022 period as loans or other non-grant instruments such as equity. On the other hand, grants made up all, or nearly all, of climate finance contributions made by Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia, the report found.
For small island states, which also receive nearly half of their adaptation money as loans, a relatively modest uptick in funding support can go a long way in shielding them from escalating climate impacts, the GCA report found. The estimated $12 billion in annual climate finance needed is a large sum for SIDS, but represents only 1.2% of all global climate finance flows, it added.
“We face rising seas, threats to food and water security, and we are running out of time,” Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. “Adaptation remains our most urgent priority. It is our first line of defence.”
The post Foreign aid cuts put adaptation finance pledge at risk, NGOs warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Foreign aid cuts put adaptation finance pledge at risk, NGOs warn
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Climate Change
DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Bonn talks close
‘SIDE-STEPPING AND STALLING’: UN climate talks in Bonn have ended in “gridlock”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reported on the failure to balance developing countries’ need for climate-adaptation finance with “richer nations’ desire to move forward” on emissions cuts. It added that both topics were subject to “rule 16”, meaning no agreement could be reached and work will be pushed to the COP31 summit in Turkey. Inside Climate News quoted UN climate executive secretary Simon Stiell, who said the talks had seen “side-stepping and stalling”.
JUST TRANSITION: One “glimmer of hope” came from negotiations on achieving a “just transition”, reported Euronews. The news outlet said negotiators “made headway on operationalising the Belém-Antalya mechanism”, intended to support people in the shift to a low-carbon economy. However, Politico concluded that much of the focus in Bonn had “shift[ed] to efforts outside diplomatic talks – raising questions about the future of global climate negotiations”.
‘ATTACKING SCIENCE’: Agence France-Presse reported on the EU, Switzerland and “dozens of developing nations” warning of “attacks on science” by a “small group of fossil-fuels interests” in Bonn. Table Briefings explained that “the 1.5C target is increasingly being challenged” and the role of the UN climate-science panel – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – in an upcoming assessment of global climate progress “remains controversial”. See Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the talks for more detail.
US-Iran deal
PRICE DROP: The US and Iran announced that they have reached an interim agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz, reported Bloomberg. Oil prices have fallen, as the “long-awaited deal” began the process of “eas[ing]” the global energy crisis triggered by the conflict, according to the New York Times. The Associated Press noted that high fuel prices will “likely outlast the Iran war”.
‘OIL GLUT’: The Financial Times reported that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a “glut of oil” emerging next year, if the peace deal holds. The IEA said this would allow countries to build new strategic reserves, as they “review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis”, according to Reuters.
‘NEW ERA’: Agence France-Presse reported that oil and gas companies have “few illusions about a return to normal for the Gulf energy industry after more than three months of blockage”. One analyst told the newswire that the war “showed the oil and gas industry that Hormuz risk is no longer just a geopolitical headline”.
Around the world
- OCEAN MONITOR: The Trump administration is “abandoning its plan” to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system key for tracking climate change after a “bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill”, reported the New York Times.
- CORAL HAVEN: The New York Times covered preliminary research, presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, suggesting there could be three times as many “coral refugia” – where corals are relatively safe from climate change – than previously thought.
- BAD CREDIT: Down to Earth reported that the first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 mechanism are “facing scrutiny over alleged links to institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta”.
- OIL BACKTRACK: Reuters reported that oil-and-gas company Equinor has dropped a renewable-energy target and scaled back clean investments, while another Reuters story noted that Shell is selling off its offshore wind assets.
1.1 billion
The number of children facing “at least three overlapping climate hazards”, according to a new Unicef report covered by Agence France-Presse.
Latest climate research
- Including the “permafrost carbon-climate feedback” in climate models increases the chance of exceeding “tipping elements” – such as the Greenland ice sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Amazon rainforest – by up to 50% | Environmental Research Letters
- The intensity of influenza outbreaks could decline in temperate regions, but increase in tropical areas over the next century, as the climate warms | PNAS Nexus
- European snow cover has declined by 20% for December and January since the start of the industrial era, revealing an “unprecedented ongoing shrinkage of European winters” | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The more than 2m battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 1m “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are already saving drivers a total of around £3bn a year, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This amounts to savings of more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs for each BEV driver in the UK. The analysis comes amid reports in UK media this week that the government is considering “watering down” its EV sales targets.
Spotlight
Oceans rising at UN climate talks
The state of the world’s oceans is inextricably linked to the changing climate – and many delegates at UN climate talks want to see more focus on this issue, reports Carbon Brief.
Oceans are often described as the world’s “greatest ally” against climate change – absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and most of the heat generated by those emissions.
They are also the site of important climate solutions, such as huge offshore windfarms and the shipping industry’s transition to cleaner fuels.
At the same time, the oceans themselves present a growing danger to coastal communities and sea life due to sea level rise, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification.
These diverse issues have led to growing calls within the UN climate process for more focus on oceans. During climate negotiations this week in Bonn – known as SB64 – nations and civil society had a chance to air these views during an “ocean and climate change dialogue”.
‘Elevate action’
Oceans first entered UN climate outcomes in 2019, when the final COP25 negotiated text requested a new “dialogue” on “the ocean and climate change to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action”.
The following years saw this dialogue established as an annual event. However, the political weight of these discussions has been limited.
COP31 is being co-led by Turkey and Australia, but with Pacific islands playing a supporting role. These small islands sometimes self-identify as “large ocean states”, stressing the ocean’s centrality in their societies.
In Bonn, figures from across the presidency threw their weight behind this issue. Chris Bowen, an Australian minister and incoming COP31 “president of negotiations”, told attendees:
“Australia, Turkey and the Pacific see an important opportunity to elevate ocean-based climate action.”
Strategies and finance
The two-day dialogue in Bonn involved a series of panels, statements and breakout groups.
One of the main topics was how oceans are integrated into national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
Three-quarters of the latest round of NDCs mention oceans, with conservation of “blue carbon” ecosystems the most frequently described action. (Landscapes such as mangroves can both absorb CO2 and protect coastal areas.)
Delegates also discussed alignment with the UN biodiversity process, as well as ocean finance, which currently makes up less than 1% of all climate finance.
(As discussions were taking place in Bonn, country officials also gathered in Mombasa, Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference. Carbon Brief’s associate editor Giuliana Viglione attended the conference and will publish a full summary shortly.)
Developing countries were clear that many of the ocean-related actions in their NDCs would depend on receiving more financial support.
‘Political momentum’
With the backing of the COP31 presidency, delegates were hopeful about where this year’s dialogue could lead.
Charles Hamilton, an advisor for the Bahamas who spoke for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the dialogue, told Carbon Brief that island representatives “are not traveling thousands of miles to just talk and pat ourselves on the back”. He added:
“A dialogue that just remains a dialogue is just more talk – no action.”
Given that, he said “discussions in the dialogue must move into COP decisions and the decisions must be actioned”, noting the importance of finance.
Marina Corrêa, oceans lead at WWF-Brazil, pointed to an upcoming UN climate change Standing Committee on Finance forum as a space to ramp up pressure on ocean finance.
More broadly, she wanted to see the presidencies translate their support into a “leader-level ocean initiative” that could “mainstream” oceans across negotiations.
“We have a really interesting opportunity, in terms of political momentum,” Corrêa told Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
‘HOTTER THAN HELL’: An episode of the BBC’s Rare Earth podcast titled “hotter than hell” considered the issue of extreme heat, with input from experts and “people facing up to the hottest temperatures on the planet”.
NOT BROKEN?: John Drake, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, wrote an essay for Aeon – also re-published as a Guardian “long read” – questioning the framing of ecosystems and climate systems “breaking down”.
ON COURSE: On his Volts podcast, US climate journalist David Roberts interviewed UK climate minister Katie White, quizzing her about whether the UK will “stay the course with its climate plans”.
Coming up
- 20-28 June: London climate action week
- 21 June: Colombia presidential runoff
- 24 June: UK Climate Change Committee progress in reducing emissions 2026 report to parliament
Pick of the jobs
- Mongabay, managing editor – Africa | Salary: Unknown. Location: Global
- Contexte, environment reporter – Brussels | Salary: €45,000-€60,000. Location: Brussels
- Climate 200, communications director | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia
- Energy Tracker Asia, energy transition correspondent | Salary: $3,000-$4,000 per month. Location: South-east Asia (remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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