Following the US exit from the Paris climate agreement in January, Argentina’s government, under President Javier Milei, is evaluating whether to follow suit – but analysts say leaving the global accord would be legally tricky and could damage relations with some of the country’s key trading partners and donors.
Earlier this month, right-wing populist leader Milei told French news magazine Le Point he was considering quitting the Paris pact “because I do not adhere to the environmentalist agenda”.
Milei campaigned on a ticket of climate change denialism, has supported major oil and gas projects and cut the environment ministry’s budget by almost half. He also pulled Argentina’s negotiating team out of the COP29 climate conference in Baku last year.
On February 5, the same day the president’s comments were published, his spokesman Manuel Adorni told journalists that Argentina was mulling a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, but no decision had been taken at that point.
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For the past year, even before Trump announced he would pull the US out of the Paris pact, Milei’s administration has been considering the implications of such a move. But analysts warn that doing so could hurt trade relations with close partners like China and the European Union (EU), and cripple climate finance flows into the country.
Experts also told Climate Home Milei would need to follow due process by seeking parliamentary approval for a withdrawal.
Congressional hurdle
On his first day in office on January 20, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to kick-start the one-year process of pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement – the same way former President Barack Obama joined the accord. But Argentina is a different story.
The Latin American nation ratified the 2015 climate agreement through a law approved by Congress, which means that Milei would need to follow the same route to leave it.
“It was approved as an integration treaty, with a status below human rights treaties and above general laws,” said Andrés Nápoli, executive director of the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN).
“If (Milei) does not go through Congress and decides to adopt the decision unilaterally, (he) would be committing a crime,” Nápoli told Climate Home.
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Despite lacking a majority in both legislative chambers, Milei managed to negotiate his way through his first year in office, but a Paris Agreement exit might be more complex, as the low-carbon transition represents an economic opportunity for several provinces.
Argentina’s recently appointed new undersecretary of environment, Fernando Jorge Brom – a business consultant with no experience in the sector – is yet to reveal his climate agenda, including his stance on the Paris Agreement, according to local NGOs. His predecessor, Ana Lamas, resigned two weeks ago “because of personal reasons due to exhaustion”.
Trade partners back Paris
The EU is Argentina’s third-largest trade partner, with food products like soy and peanuts being the main exports. Its biggest trade partner is Brazil, the host of this year’s COP30 climate summit.
Last December, the renegotiation of the commercial agreement between the EU and Mercosur – a trade bloc that includes Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay – included a new article citing the Paris Agreement as an essential element.
“Recognizing the role of trade in contributing to the response to the urgent threat of climate change, each party shall remain a party, in good faith, of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement,” states a key clause in the text.
If Argentina were to leave the climate accord, the trade deal with the EU would be partially or totally suspended, according to its terms. It would also isolate the country from the rest of the Mercosur members, which could remain in the agreement.
The updated EU-Mercosur agreement still needs to be reviewed by legal teams and approved by respective parliaments.
Argentina’s second trading partner is China. Last month, in response to the US decision to leave the Paris Agreement, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, “China’s resolve and actions to actively respond to climate change will remain unchanged,” adding that “China will work with all parties to actively address the climate challenge and promote a global green and low-carbon transition.”
Finance needs
For the past two decades, Argentina has been struggling with economic instability, macroeconomic imbalances and a stratospheric inflation rate. More recently, climate impacts resulted in a production loss of 50 million tonnes of cereal crops between 2022 and 2023 due to a record drought.
Remaining in the Paris climate pact would allow Argentina to use the treaty as a framework to channel investments, said Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, an Argentinian climate policy analyst and consultant.
“It gives [Buenos Aires] access to adaptation funds, capacity building programmes and international cooperation for the development of projects aligned with climate action that contribute to a country’s infrastructure and society,” he explained.
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Of the 72 projects the World Bank approved for Argentina in the last decade, 23 were directly linked to policies to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
The Inter-American Development Bank has also financed projects supporting the emergency response to floods in Corrientes and Entre Ríos provinces, as well as forest fires in Córdoba.
IMF indifference?
In 2018, Mauricio Macri’s government contracted debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of $44 billion, making it the largest disbursement in the fund’s history at the time.
In 2022, Argentina and the IMF agreed an extension to pay back the debt over 10 years. In December 2024, the interest part of the loan for the first two years was paid. Now Milei’s government is seeking to negotiate a debt restructuring of the same loan, which could include climate considerations.
“The IMF has an important role to play in helping its members institute fiscal and macroeconomic policies to help address these climate-related challenges,” the fund says on its website, adding that “climate considerations are now embedded in their bilateral and multilateral surveillance, capacity development, and lending.”
In the 2022 agreement, the objectives set for Argentina included three specific climate policies: a new electric mobility law, a “Green Productive Development Plan” to boost green skills and the circular economy, and a stronger environmental perspective in the national budget.
Yet those are not mandatory conditions to access funds, said Mercedes D’Alessandro, analyst and former director of economy, equality and gender at the Ministry of Economy in the previous administration.
“For the debt restructuring sought by Milei’s government, the [IMF] might have a deeper interest in macroeconomic goals,” said D’Alessandro.
In a recent evaluation, the IMF drew attention to certain commitments in Argentina’s 2022 programme of policy objectives that were not met – among them gender goals – but not climate policies.
“Climate change is not on the IMF’s agenda of priorities – or not specifically with Argentina,” D’Alessandro told Climate Home.
While that may be the case with the country’s individual fiscal situation, Maurtua Konstantinidis warned that snubbing the international climate regime could shut Argentina out of a broader global effort – now gathering pace – to ease the high debt burdens of many developing countries so they can spend more on climate action.
“At a time when there are talks of reforms to the financial system in pursuit of a more sustainable and fair future, staying outside of these spaces means losing opportunities for the future – opportunities that a country like Argentina needs,” he added.
The post Risk of financial fallout could deter Argentina from leaving Paris Agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
Risk of financial fallout may deter Argentina from leaving Paris Agreement
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
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In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
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SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
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Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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