About The Independent
The Independent is among the UK’s leading national news brands. It is independent of ties
to political parties and operates along guiding principles of integrity, inclusion, innovation and
making positive change happen.
This submission draws on evidence from Rethinking Global Aid, a project to investigate
the impact of foreign aid spending cuts on Africa and other parts of the developing world. We
are reporting on the repercussions for global health and the climate crisis, and interrogating
what the future holds. The project receives funding from the Gates Foundation. All of the
journalism is editorially independent.
Summary
The Independent has a dedicated team specifically reporting on and documenting the effectiveness and dynamics around aid, with a focus on the climate crisis; global health; cross-border disease risks; and security.
Our reporting has consistently evidenced the nature of the climate crisis in the world’s poorest countries, looked at what kinds of foreign assistance are most effective, and what kinds of support is most needed. We have also looked closely at where aid cuts are beginning to have an impact, by gathering human stories on the ground, generating and analysing data to present our readers with .
The Independent is calling on the government to draw on this full spectrum of work as it assesses the size and scope of its climate finance target for 2026 to 2030.
*************************************************************************************************************
What impacts will the reduction of Official Development Assistance have on the UK’s ability to deliver its ICF commitments?
UK International Climate Finance (ICF) has the express aim of helping the UK to deliver on its climate obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement: to contribute to the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C, while recognising the common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of different countries in meeting that target. As the first industrialised nation, and one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the UK should play a role in helping other countries address the climate crisis.
Even before the expiration of the current UK climate finance goal, we have seen how reductions in the UK aid budget, and other rich countries like the US, have left poorer countries facing serious challenges in addressing the climate crisis. We have seen how plunging aid has left countries in the Horn of Africa, like Somalia, facing the possibility of famine during periods of drought. We have also seen how families suffering in Nigeria in farmer-herder conflicts – which, at their root, are fights over climate-threatened resources including water – have been left in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps that have, over this past year, seen practically all NGO support dry up.
Through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and interview-based reporting, The Independent has also found that substantial UK aid cuts are expected to nature and conservation-focused programmes – with NGOs warning that these will cause untold damage to animals, people and the planet. Organisations like the UN’s World Food Programme have also described how plummeting aid receipts have left them facing the prospect of totally ending operations in some countries, despite the challenges around climate and conflict-driven humanitarian disasters only increasing.
We have reported on the ground from the slums of Nairobi, where extreme weather is increasingly threatening livelihoods through flooding and food price inflation, and aid cuts have shut off some of the few economic opportunities that were available to people. We have also reported from a village in the Afar region of Ethiopia, whose residents have been displaced after a year of devastating droughts and flooding. NGO support has all but completely dried up for villagers after some 25 aid organisations left the region over the course of the last year.
As these examples show, the story of aid can support climate efforts is not always obvious. The most helpful climate adaptation efforts, for example, might be around helping communities generate a long-term stable income, rather than purely a specific intervention to address climate-driven extreme weather impacts. The immediate cause of a humanitarian situation might seem to be something like conflict or a natural disaster, but climate change will also then act as a less-obvious amplifier of vulnerabilities.
What is clear, however, is that millions of people across the world have become more vulnerable to the climate crisis over the past year due to aid cuts - and that vulnerability is set to only increase in the coming years as climate impacts worsen and aid budgets continue to be cut back.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/trump-somalia-aid-climate-war-un-b2743966.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/world/aid-food-hunger-nigeria-chad-cameroon-climate-b2782152.htm
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uk-aid-cuts-animals-wildlife-nature-b2799500.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nigeria-food-aid-climate-conflict-b2819493.htm
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/trump-aid-cuts-africa-kenya-slum-b2833021.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/trump-aid-cuts-ethiopia-flood-b2851604.html
*************************************************************************************************************
How does the UK engage with multilateral banks and climate funds and, how is this shaping cross-departmental ICF strategies?
The Independent’s reporting suggests that significantly more could be done to assist the world’s poorest countries – many of whom are seriously aid-dependent and are struggling to attract investment from other sources - access money from international climate funds like the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Climate Investment Funds (CIF). These are major vehicles through which UK climate finance is accessed.
Despite efforts to reform climate funds as a part of Brazil’s G20 Presidency in 2024, funds often continue to prioritise wealthier developing countries, and have complicated procedures that poor countries with weak civil services often struggle to engage with, Gebru Endalew, a former chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, told us. David Moinina Sengeh, chief minister of Sierra Leone, told us that the hoops his country has to jump through to access climate finance are “counterintuitive”, given that it is nations like his that require climate finance the most.
At Cop30 in Brazil, representatives from conflict-impacted countries told The Independent that they face particular challenges accessing climate finance, given reputational issues and reduced administration ability. That is despite the fact that these countries are among the world’s poorest, and therefore extremely vulnerable to climate impacts. “We understand that climate donors cannot just give out their money without assurances, and we are not after an easier path,” Oumar Gadji Soumaila, director general for Chad’s climate fund, told us. “We just want recognition that the challenges that we are facing of desertification and insecurity are not the same as those faced by other countries, and we need more support.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/climate-aid-cop30-brazil-belem-b2856304.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/aid-uk-trump-sierra-leone-b2847541.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/cop30-climate-africa-somalia-chad-b2864734.html
*************************************************************************************************************
Is the UK using the right and most effective financial instruments to deliver ICF?
With the price of renewable technology plummeting in recent years, and significant progress having been made in building knowledge and regulatory capacity around renewable energy in developing countries through previous aid partnerships, the private sector looks set to be increasingly able to finance renewable energy with less support from international donors. We have also seen how British International Investments, the development finance institution of the UK government which has relied on small volumes of UK aid for cash injections, has been able to use concessional finance to strategically unlock private investment in renewables in developing countries.
On climate adaptation, however, it is clear that there is a massive need for grant-based financing for low income countries, with the gap between what is available and what is needed set to soar as climate impacts increase and aid cuts take hold. At both the Africa Climate and Summit and Cop30, numerous NGOs and country representatives told The Independent how efforts to adapt to climate change had been devastated due to aid cuts – adding that grant-based financing is particularly crucial due to it being very hard to build a business case for such “public good” activities in the world’s least developed countries.
Grants for adaptation are best when focused on the local level, experts say. They can take a myriad of different forms, from cash assistance to mangrove restoration; tree-planting efforts to adopting climate-smart agriculture. With the UN Adaptation Gap report showing that global adaptation financing has been in decline in recent years even before the impact of recent aid cuts. Senior government figures from countries including Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Somalia have stressed to The Independent just how important making a determined effort to make more grant-based funding for climate adaptation is.
Our reporting has also found that there are some areas that have slipped from the top of the global climate agenda, which would require more focus from both a financial and policy standpoint. Notably, food systems were notably absent from the final Cop30 agreement, despite the significant impacts the climate crisis is having and even though the talks were held in agribusiness giant Brazil. Conflict-affected countries also told The Independent that their specific needs around climate finance were being overlooked, despite their dire situations.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/trump-obama-africa-power-aid-b2785866.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/un-climate-crisis-aid-cuts-us-uk-b2854702.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/trump-cuts-aid-climate-africa-b2823143.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/africa-climate-crisis-aid-cuts-us-b2793160.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/cop30-brazil-aid-cuts-trump-africa-b2863692.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/cop30-brazil-food-amazon-climate-b2871542.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/cop30-climate-africa-somalia-chad-b2864734.html
*************************************************************************************************************
How can the UK utilise innovative mechanisms, such as debt relief, as alternative routes to fulfilling its ICF commitments?
We have carried out significant, in-depth reporting into the impact of debt on the finances of developing countries. It has shown how Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are currently paying significantly more on debt servicing than on health and education – and they are also paying billions of pounds more to cover debts than they receive in aid to fight the climate crisis. It means that countries that have done the least to cause the crisis are being left unable to address it.
To pick one example of how these dynamics impact countries: Nigeria is set to pay an average of $13bn each year to external private creditors between 2025 and 2030, according to Christian Aid. That figure is roughly the same as the $13.4bn outlined in the country’s climate strategy – which aims to install solar power for 5 million homes and 200,000 small to medium-sized businesses, convert 30 million homes to clean cooking fuels, and eliminate methane flaring in the country’s oil industry within the same period.
The G20 Common Framework on debt relief has proved to be ineffective in offering debt relief, according to those The Independent has spoken to – and going forward, the UK is uniquely placed to help these countries address their debt crises. That is partially due to the fact that around 90 per cent of the debt belonging countries eligible for debt relief in the Common Framework are governed by English law. However, so far efforts to drive reform have been extremely weak, according to observers who have spoken to The Independent, due to the government being “terrified of upsetting the City of London”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/aid-climate-debt-africa-decarbonisation-b2843274.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa-climate-debt-development-aid-b2881957.html
*************************************************************************************************************
Is the UK’s use of loans, that represented more than two-thirds of the global ICF commitment in 2022, appropriate and, what is its impact on low-income and climate-vulnerable countries?
The Independent’s reporting suggests that loans are useful tools for middle income countries, and also for areas where there is a clear business case, such as in big infrastructure or renewable energy projects. But for climate adaptation – and particularly in the world’s poorest countries – grant-based financing is crucial.
Grants for adaptation need to be focused on the local level, experts say, and can take a myriad of different forms, from cash assistance to mangrove restoration, tree planting efforts to adopting climate-smart agriculture. With the UN Adaptation Gap report showing that global adaptation financing has been in decline in recent years even before the impact of recent aid cuts, senior government figures from countries including Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Somalia have stressed just how important making a determined effort to make more grant-based funding for climate adaptation is.
As mentioned above, many low income countries are already under severe debt-related stress, so experts say the UK should be careful of where it is adding to that burden through more lending, particularly given what countries have told The Independent is inadequate debt relief so far.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/un-climate-crisis-aid-cuts-us-uk-b2854702.html
*************************************************************************************************************
How should the UK’s ICF be spread between, mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage spend to respond to climate change most efficiently?
For the world’s poorest countries, which contribute comparatively little to climate change, climate adaptation has repeatedly been cited as the priority in our reporting. Energy access remains very important – but with cheap Chinese solar panels arriving on the market, and increasing confidence among private sector players around renewables in low income countries, countries have told The Independent that mitigation should be less of a priority than adaptation when it comes to aid.
With support for an official loss and damage fund struggling to gain traction at UN climate discussions, support for climate losses is also well placed if directed towards humanitarian efforts, such as the UK already does.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/africa-climate-crisis-aid-cuts-us-b2793160.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/trump-obama-africa-power-aid-b2785866.html