- What timeline options were delegates debating?
- How did the timeline discussions unfold?
- What were the main points of disagreement?
- Why is the IPCC in a ‘serious funding crisis’?
- How have scientists reacted?
- What other issues remain unresolved?
- How are the IPCC AR7 reports progressing?
- How might the IPCC use AI and enhance gender inclusivity?
The UK said it will cut its overseas aid budget in a new blow to vulnerable nations. The move will make it more difficult for the government to deliver on a promise to increase climate finance to developing countries, analysts have warned.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to slash the UK aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income, which he said would allow the UK to spend £13.4 billion more on defense per year from 2027.
The UK’s climate finance commitment comes from its aid budget, which was already reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income a year before the country hosted the COP26 climate talks in 2021.
Starmer is due to travel to Washington on Thursday to meet with US President Donald Trump, who has been piling pressure on Europe’s cash-strapped governments to take more responsibility for their own defence.
The decision came as a shock to the international development community, which is still reeling from Trump’s decision to freeze USAID spending and from a string of cuts to overseas development aid by European governments. Germany, Sweden, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have all announced significant cuts to their aid budgets recently.
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“Catastrophic blow”
International charities and aid organisations have responded in dismay, slamming the move as “a betrayal”, “short-sighted” and “a truly catastrophic blow” that will cause more people to die and lose their livelihoods in the world’s most vulnerable nations.
Worsening climate impacts, soaring humanitarian needs and growing instability across the world requires stronger global solidarity rather than retreat, experts warned.
“When we’ve just had the hottest January on record and humanitarian crises are at an all-time high, the UK government’s decision to slash its [overseas development assistance] budget is deeply shameful,” said Teresa Anderson, of ActionAid International.
Tom Mitchell, executive director of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), told Climate Home News that Starmer should consider cutting harmful fossil fuel subsidies “before raiding an already depleted support system that is relied on by some of the world’s most vulnerable people”.
Climate finance watchers told Climate Home the move also threatens the UK’s ability to deliver the increased climate finance promised to developing countries at last year’s COP29.
Climate funds on the chopping board?
The UK has pledged to spend £11.6 billion ($14.7 billion) on climate finance for developing countries between 2021 and 2026, and Starmer’s Labour government recently said it remains committed to meeting this pledge.
However, analysis carried out by the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact last year found that the goal would be challenging to meet as more than half of the money is expected to be spent in the last two years and amid growing pressures on the aid budget. This is despite the UK making accounting changes, which increased what it counted as climate finance without recipient countries receiving more money.
Laetitia Pettinotti, of the ODI Global think-tank, said the UK’s announcement lacks clarity on whether climate finance will be ringfenced from the cuts, which are due to take effect from 2027.
“It seems likely that climate finance could be on the chopping board if over half of that pledge is yet to be met. Sweeping cuts with no transparency is what we’ve come to expect from Trump and Musk; Starmer can’t follow suit, he needs to provide clarity,” she said.
Moreover, rich nations like the UK will be expected to dig deeper into their pockets to help scale the finance that flows to countries most vulnerable to climate impacts and who contributed the least to causing them.
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Worse timing
At the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, developed countries agreed to triple finance to help poorer nations cut emissions and cope with climate impacts to $300 billion annually by 2035.
“Let’s be clear this can be life and death for struggling communities and this reduction could make meeting the UK’s climate finance commitments even more challenging,” said Gareth Redmond-King, of the UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
As wealthy nations are expected to bolster their existing climate finance commitments, “the UK government has just reduced the budget that climate finance comes out of,” he told Climate Home.
Ahead of critical climate talks in Brazil in November, when countries are due to assess whether collective climate pledges can halt warming in line with global goals, “we were expecting to hear new climate finance commitments by the rich countries to build confidence in the poorest and emerging economies that they can afford to be ambitious in their climate targets,” said long-term climate finance watcher Clare Shakya, of The Nature Conservancy.
“If we do not peak emissions as close to 1.5C as feasible and halt biodiversity’s decline, we will be facing many more security challenges in the coming years. The timing of this news from the UK could not be worse,” Shakya told Climate Home.
Prime Minister Starmer told UK members of parliament the decision had required some “extremely difficult and painful choices” and that this was not one “that I wanted to take or that I am happy to take”.
“We will do everything we can to return to a world where that is not the case and to rebuild a capability on development,” he said, insisting the UK will “continue to play a key humanitarian role” in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza, as well as tackling climate change.
The UK government was contacted for comment but didn’t respond at the time of publication.
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UK aid budget cuts threaten climate finance pledge to vulnerable nations, experts warn
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Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
The post Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs appeared first on Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
Countries have failed – for the sixth time running – to agree on the timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) next set of influential reports.
The IPCC’s 65th session (IPCC-65) was seen by many to be the final opportunity for countries to agree on a schedule where its seventh assessment report (AR7) would be published in time for the UN’s second “global stocktake” of climate action.
Before last week’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, IPCC chair Prof Sir Jim Skea had