On his first day in office, US President Donald Trump officially began the one-year process of leaving the 2015 Paris climate agreement and announced a pause on all government aid funding for 90 days pending a review of the aid programme’s policy goals.
The US provided around $11 billion in 2024 to help developing countries reduce planet-heating emissions and adapt to climate change – but all current and future projects are now under threat from the broader aid review.
Mattias Söderberg is global climate lead at Danish charity DanChurchAid, which receives funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “We are not surprised, but very disappointed,” he said. “Every dollar makes a difference, and when aid is paused, it has effect for people on the ground in some of the most vulnerable countries.”
The CEO of humanitarian charity Mercy Corps, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, called on governments, civil society and the private sector to “step up where leadership is lacking and accelerate efforts to reduce emissions, scale up climate finance, and contribute to a climate-resilient future for all people.”
Executive orders
After his inauguration on Monday, Trump signed a series of executive orders in front of a crowd at a sports stadium in Washington DC.
Among them was an order that announced the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and accused the 2015 global deal of steering “American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people”.
The document also requires the heads of government departments and federal agencies tasked with disbursing climate funds overseas to submit within 30 days a report detailing their actions “to revoke or rescind” policies implemented to support former President Joe Biden’s international climate finance plan.
Joe Thwaites, senior advocate for international climate finance with the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s assault on overseas climate funding had not come as a surprise but may not work as the president is hoping.
“Everyone expected Trump to again try to zero out US climate finance. But it’s ultimately up to Congress whether that actually happens,” Thwaites said. “Last time they rejected the most draconian of Trump’s proposed cuts and we hope they will do so again.”
The executive order also added that the US would “immediately cease or revoke any purported financial commitment made by the United States under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).”
During the first Trump administration, the US continued to fund the UNFCCC and to report emissions data. But Cambridge University academic Joanna Depledge said this language suggests they are unlikely to do so again. The US contributes about a fifth of the UNFCCC’s budget and owes it about $10 million.
The previous Biden administration promised to work with Congress to deliver $3 billion to the UN’s Green Climate Fund. This money has not been received by the UN fund – which is also still owed $1 billion from a previous US pledge – and is very unlikely to be delivered under Trump.
A separate order signed by Trump targets overseas aid spending more widely, saying it would be reviewed over the next 90 days by the State Department for “programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy”.
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While the US will join Iran, Libya and Yemen in the small club of nations outside of the Paris Agreement, Trump stopped short of leaving the broader, older and more fundamental UNFCCC – which all UN nations are signed up to.
This means the US will retain the right to attend COP talks as a party to the convention, with full voting and speaking powers, rather than as just an observer state.
Legal experts are divided on whether Trump has the power to leave the UNFCCC without the approval of two-thirds of the US Senate, as the Senate endorsed the UNFCCC almost unanimously in 1992.
Trump also announced measures aiming to boost US oil and gas production and restrict the development of wind energy.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Matteo Civillini)
This story was updated after publication to include additional comment.