Age International submission to the IDC inquiry on the UK’s International Climate Finance

January 2026

Introduction

1. Age International is a UK charity focusing on improving the lives of older people in low and middle-income countries. Age International is a subsidiary of Age UK and a member of the HelpAge International (HAI) global network. Our mission is to help older people around the world to overcome poverty, claim their rights and challenge discrimination, so they can lead dignified, secure, active, and healthy lives.  

2. The world is ageing as people are living longer and global population ageing and climate change are happening concurrently. 2.1 billion people (1 in 5) will be aged over 60 years old by 2050. Many of the countries that are facing increasing risk of climate disaster, and its associated impacts, are also those facing the most rapid ageing of their populations.[1]
3. Older people are feeling the impacts of climate change, and it is directly impacting their life expectancy and quality of life. The 2024 Lancet Countdown on health and climate change found that heat-related mortality of people older than 65 has increased by 167% since the 1990s.[2]  Many older people are also witnessing climatic shifts, water scarcity and deforestation over their lifetimes in their communities around the world.
4. Older people are an important part of the climate change response. The public attitude tracker on climate change and net zero for England in 2024 showed that 80% of all adults were fairly, or very, concerned about climate change, and that older people were more likely to be very concerned than younger people.[3] Older people also have much to offer, contributing important knowledge to inform climate policies and adaptation plans at the local, national and international levels. They can bring wisdom, skills, traditional practices, ecological knowledge, tangible solutions and commitment to the fight for climate justice.
5. It is critical that climate change finance pays attention to the way the climate crisis and population ageing interact, but the current ICF strategy does not reference ageing and older people.[4] This issue is replicated across international funding mechanisms - for example, The Green Climate Fund (GCF)[5] and the Adaptation Fund,[6] which do not explicitly target ageing populations. 

What impacts will the reduction of Official Development Assistance have on the UK’s ability to deliver its ICF commitments? 

6. Further cuts to ODA will undermine the UK’s ability to deliver its ICF commitments. These cuts come at a time when the need for support for adaptation, mitigation, loss and damage is more crucial than ever. Older people are disproportionately affected by extreme weather events and natural disasters resulting from the climate crisis. In 2013, almost 40% of recorded deaths by Typhoon Haiyan were over the age of 60 – despite this age group making up only 8% of the general population in the worst affected areas.[7]
7. Parties to the Paris Agreement, have committed to taking action to address climate change that respects, promotes and considers the rights of ‘of Indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations’[8]. As part of the UK Government’s commitment to leaving no one behind, support needs to reach the marginalised groups who are most impacted by climate change and for whom climate change will severely hinder progress towards meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Older people are a key, but often overlooked, group who are impacted by the climate crisis across both high, middle and low-income countries.[9]
8. The UNFCCC (in Annex II,)[10] requires developed countries to provide ‘new and additional’ finance for climate change. The 2024 rapid review of climate finance by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact makes clear, however, that UK commitments on finance were made possible by ‘changing the goal posts’ and through methodological changes in the way that the UK accounts for its ICF spend, rather than through new and additional finance.[11] As a result, a significant gap exists in how the UK contributes to climate finance that meets the needs of communities in low and middle-income countries.

How are the UK’s ICF programmes selected and, are they effective in meeting the long-term needs and priorities of low-income and climate-vulnerable countries? 

9. The current ICF strategy highlights the scale of the challenge, and how the 2020s are a critical decade for the delivery of climate change ambition.[12] It identifies the risk of climate change pushing between 68 and 132 million people into poverty, and how this will disproportionately impact those already facing inequality and higher levels of marginalisation, which includes older people and those with disabilities.
10. The strategy does not recognise, however, that older people are one of the most impacted groups, or that older people and multigenerational collaboration are essential components for the effective delivery of climate change ambitions. [13] They should therefore be a critical component of the strategy. This is a missed opportunity for the UK Government to demonstrate leadership on the global stage - as the failure to recognise the agency and contributions of older people, as well as the risk they face, is replicated in international funding mechanisms. For example, the GCF[14] and the Adaptation Fund[15] do not explicitly target ageing populations despite the increasing body of research that demonstrates the social, physiological, and psychological factors that contribute to the vulnerability of older adults to climate change.[16]
11. To be more effective, the climate fund needs to specifically target ageing populations, especially in contexts where there is currently a marked lack of social protection into older age and older people lack an adequate social safety net in the event of climate disaster .[17] UK support for social protection, crucially social pensions, are an important vehicle for supporting older people’s resilience in this context of a changing climate and shifting livelihoods.[18]This must also involve meaningful participation and co-design with older people, integrating delivery mechanisms that make it easier to reach older populations, and ensuring that proposal templates and project evaluations require or encourage age-disaggregated vulnerability data. In the case of the latter, older people are too often rendered invisible in data collection that either stops after the age of 50 or lumps ‘over 50s’ into a single age cohort.[19]
12. Older people are particularly susceptible to harm from climate impacts, for example in heatwaves and natural disasters. More than 23% of people aged 69 and over will experience peak daily temperatures that routinely exceed 37.5 °C, compared to 14% as of 2024.[20] They therefore need to be included in climate adaptation planning and mitigation efforts in the UK’s ICF.[21]
13. Older people’s knowledge and lived experiences are essential for designing community resilience strategies.[22] UK Government climate finance should support a bottom-up approach to climate mitigation and adaptation, such as working with Older People’s Associations (OPAs) through micro-grant programmes to build future resilience and strengthen partner-led ways of working. OPAs are community-based groups of older people working together to improve the situation of older people and the community they live in.[23] They can be effective mechanisms through which older people and their communities can prepare for and respond to disasters and adapt to ongoing climate impacts. In Thailand, for example, local Older People’s Associations have been leading a programme to convert plant waste into soil enhancer (biochar) that is sold to create income.[24] This captures carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas emissions while boosting soil quality.
14. Older people’s risk and vulnerabilities are multiplying as climate change accelerates and social support systems erode.[25] In this context, UK climate finance can play an important role in building older people’s resilience in the face of climate shocks. An example of where this support could be useful is with older people carrying out small-scale fishing (SSF) in South and South-East Asia. Recent research conducted by HelpAge International demonstrates that coastal economies are facing both climate change and rapid population ageing, and that SSF is providing food, employment, and cultural continuity.[26] Challenges due to climate change include coastal erosion, increased cyclones, ocean warming, and rising sea levels. At the same time, SSF is increasingly becoming an “ageing occupation” as younger generations move away from traditional livelihoods impacted by ecological unpredictability. Older people in these fishing communities are being overlooked and are working well beyond retirement age due to the absence of pension systems and secure livelihoods, and social pensions are one important vehicle for supporting older people’s resilience in this context of a changing climate and shifting livelihoods.[27]
15. Older people and multigenerational approaches to climate change are essential and novel components for delivering the UK’s climate change ambitions. They should form joint priorities in UK delivery of ICF. Greater investment in this area can help cities adapt to climate change, whilst creating spaces that are accessible, inclusive, and life-affirming for older adults. For example, HelpAge partners in Colombia and Mexico have been implementing multigenerational eco-based adaptation approaches that were co-designed with older residents. These transform urban gardens into vibrant, age-friendly green spaces that integrate native plant species, water-sensitive design, and inclusive infrastructure to strengthen resilience and biodiversity.[28]

How should the UK’s ICF be spread between, mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage spend to respond to climate change most efficiently? 

16. The interaction between the ongoing impacts of climate change and the global demographic transformations of ageing societies should inform the spread of the UK’s ICF. A priority should be to increase the amount of funding provided for adaptation with a focus on grant-based support that targets the most vulnerable communities. This funding must ringfence ‘inclusion performance’ – requiring every mitigation, adaptation, and Learning & Development programme to evidence older people’s participation through, for example, OPAs. This funding should also budget for accessibility and targeted outreach. Without this, ICF spending risks systematically missing out older people as a fast-growing cohort, as well as the opportunities that the inclusion of older people can create in the longer term.
17. To be responsive to ongoing demographic shifts, the need to leave no-one behind and the dynamic relationship between pressures for spending on mitigation vs adaptation, Age International considers what an efficient split would look like as follows:

• Adaptation (45%) This should be the portfolio’s “impact engine”: climate-resilient health systems, heat action, inclusive early warning and evacuation, and livelihood resilience. This requires age-disaggregated risk analysis and indicators to strengthen planning and reduce delivery failures.
• Mitigation (40%) This should target the highest additionality. This includes energy access transitions, methane, and nature-positive mitigation. These actions also reduce heat-related burdens and improve health, which are key for ageing populations and those contexts where older people have caring responsibilities or continue to work into older age. The UK already frames ICF to deliver both mitigation and adaptation outcomes together.[29]
• Loss & Damage (15%) This is the efficiency backstop for unavoidable harms, such as rapid-onset disaster support and slow-onset impacts where adaptation limits are reached. The L&D funding architecture is now operational, and UK ICF should treat it as complementary rather than an optional charity[30].

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