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.”

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.

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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

Colombia wants countries to discuss options for a global agreement to ensure that the extraction, processing and recycling of minerals – including those needed for the clean energy transition – don’t harm the environment and human wellbeing.

The mineral-rich nation is proposing to create an expert group to “identify options for international instruments, including global and legally-binding instruments, for coordinated global action on the environmentally sound management of minerals and metals through [their] full lifecyle”.

Colombia hopes this will eventually lead to an agreement on the need for an international treaty to define mandatory rules and standards that would make mineral value chains more transparent and accountable.

The proposal was set out in a draft resolution submitted to the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) earlier this week and seen by Climate Home News. UNEA, which is constituted of all UN member states, is the world’s top decision-making body for matters relating to the environment. The assembly’s seventh session will meet in Kenya in December to vote on countries’ proposals.

Soaring demand for the minerals used to manufacture clean energy technologies and electric vehicles, as well as in the digital, construction and defence industries have led to growing environmental destruction, human rights violations and social conflict.

Colombia argues there is an “urgent need” to strengthen global cooperation and governance to reduce the risks to people and the planet.

Options for a global minerals agreement

The proposal is among a flurry of initiatives to strength global mineral governance at a time when booming demand is putting pressure on new mining projects.

Colombia, which produces emeralds, gold, platinum and silver for exports, first proposed the idea for a binding international agreement on minerals traceability and accountability on the sidelines of the UN biodiversity talks it hosted in October 2024.

Since then, the South American nation has been quietly trying to drum up support for the idea, especially among African and European nations.

Its draft resolution to UNEA7 contains very few details, leaving it open for countries to discuss what kind of global instrument would be best suited to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable.

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Colombia says it wants the expert group to build on other UN initiatives, including a UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, which set out seven principles to ensure the mining, processing and recycling of energy transition minerals are done responsibly and benefit everyone.

The group would include technical experts and representatives from international and regional conventions, major country groupings as well as relevant stakeholders.

It would examine the feasibility and effectiveness of different options for a global agreement, consider their costs and identify measures to support countries to implement what is agreed.

The resolution also calls for one or two meetings for member states to discuss the idea before the UNEA8 session planned in late 2027, when countries would decide on a way forward.

No time to lose for treaty negotiations

Colombia’s efforts to advance global talks on mineral supply chains have been welcomed by resource experts and campaigners. But not everyone agrees on the best strategy to move the discussion forward at a time when multilateralism is coming under attack.

Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, said she had hoped that the resolution would explicitly call for negotiations to begin on an international minerals treaty.

“Treaty negotiations take a long time. If you don’t even start with it now, it will take even longer. I don’t see how in two or three years it will be easier to come to an agreement,” she told Climate Home.

Despite the geopolitical challenges, “we need joint rules to prevent a huge race to the bottom for [mineral] standards”. That could start with a group of countries coming together and starting to enforce joint standards for mining, processing and recycling minerals, she said.

But any meaningful global agreement on mineral supply chains would require backing from China, the world’s largest processor of minerals, which dominates most of the supply chains. And with Colombia heading for an election in May, it will need all the support it can get to move its proposal forward.

‘Voluntary initiative won’t cut it’

Juliana Peña Niño, Colombia country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, is more optimistic. “Colombia’s leadership towards fairer mineral value chains is a welcome step,” she told Climate Home News.

“At UNEA7, we need an ambitious debate that gives the proposed expert group a clear mandate to advance concrete next steps — not delay decisions — and that puts the voices of those most affected at the centre. One thing is clear: the path forward must ultimately deliver a binding instrument, as yet another voluntary initiative simply won’t cut it,” she said.

More than 50 civil society groups spanning Latin America, Africa and Europe previously described Colombia’s work on the issue as “a chance to build a new global paradigm rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice and equity”.

“As the energy transition and digitalisation drive demand for minerals, we cannot afford to repeat old extractive models built on asymmetry – we must redefine them,” they wrote in a statement.

Main image: The UN Environment Assembly is hosted in Nairobi, Kenya. (Natalia Mroz/ UN Environment)

The post Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement

If you’re young, pregnant and Latina, chances are you live near agricultural fields sprayed with higher levels of brain-damaging organophosphate pesticides.

By Liza Gross

A baby in the womb has few defenses against industrial petrochemicals designed to kill.

California Sanctions Stark Disparities in Pesticide Exposure During Pregnancy