UK programs to protect nature and the climate in developing countries are suffering huge budget cuts despite ministers’ promises, The Guardian has learned.
The cuts belie the government’s claims that it is meeting its international climate finance obligations and are hidden behind a system that experts have called opaque.
In fact, several programs aimed at protecting nature in vital ecosystems in Africa and Asia have been eliminated. Other plans have been reduced in scope, undermining their impact.
Also in doubt is an initiative, the £500m Blue Planet Fund, set up after Sir David Attenborough’s revelations about the plight of the marine environment in his Blue Planet series sparked widespread public concern.
The cuts have not been publicly disclosed and are hidden amid a chronic lack of transparency in climate aid spending. The Guardian has discovered:
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The cut and partial closure of the £100 million Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, aimed at protecting nature in vital ecosystems in poor regions abroad. Originally the goal was six regions, in Africa, South America and Asia, but the number has been reduced to two.
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Coast – a project for Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition – and Pact (Preparing and Accelerating Climate Transitions) are suffering substantial cuts.
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The future of the £500m Blue Planet Fund has been left in doubt despite its successful operation.
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The scope of other plans has been reduced, for example allowing only one year of funding when years were expected.
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Data requests under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that spending has been cut across departments responsible for international climate finance (ICF).
These plans should have been worth hundreds of millions of pounds, but are likely to be reduced substantially, in some cases by more than half. It is difficult to measure exact budget cuts, because there is no transparent government system for accounting for FCI. Responses to freedom of information requests, seen by The Guardian, have revealed some headline data on nature spending, but the government has not produced project-level data since 2020.
For the five-year period to the end of March 2026, the government should have spent £11.6bn on ICF to help developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the impacts of climate breakdown, with £3bn of the commitment going towards protecting nature.
The Guardian has already revealed that the government plans to reduce the next round of ICF spending by more than a fifth, to £9bn over the next five years, which experts say is not in line with the international commitment by developed countries, including the UK, to triple the global ICF to $300bn a year by 2035.
The original promise to spend £11.6bn on ICF from 2021 to 2026 was made by Boris Johnson in 2021 ahead of the UN Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
At least £2bn of that amount is likely to be offset by an accounting change made by the last Conservative government, whereby 30% of any aid spending to the world’s least developed countries can be counted as FCI, even if it has no explicit climate or natural components. This could allow the £11.6bn commitment to be met while cutting climate and nature programmes.
Jonathan Hall, of Conservation International UK, said the government was failing to live up to voters’ expectations. “Polls show that protecting rainforests, oceans and wildlife is a very popular use of the UK aid budget, but the government appears set to abandon these funding commitments, just as the Green Party wins its first by-election,” he said.
“The UK’s support for international nature must be maintained as its proportion of the international climate budget. A radical improvement in transparency is also needed, so that the UK public can see and take pride in the iconic ecosystems from Attenborough’s documentaries that UK funding is protecting, as well as understand the huge impacts of the cuts on these environments and their local communities.”
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office declined to answer questions about individual funds and spending items. “The UK remains on track to deliver at least £11.6 billion in ICF by the end of March 2026,” a spokesperson said. “We continue to publish regular and transparent information to allow people in the UK and internationally to follow our progress, and will shortly publish ODA (foreign development aid) allocations for the next three years.”
Several people familiar with the workings of some of the funds, who could not be identified, said the money was not being delivered and some was being cut. A common complaint was that funds were being fed in dribs and drabs, doled out year by year with no future guarantees, limiting the organizations’ ability to plan and jeopardizing the employment of local workers needed to deliver projects.
Adrian Gahan of Campaign for Nature, one of the co-creators of the UK’s Nature Finance Tracker, said: “Inspired by David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series, the UK government has spent five years creating the Blue Planet Fund which helps protect oceans, marine life and the communities that depend on them around the world. Unfortunately, in the year of Attenborough’s centenary, it appears that the government is considering closing this programme. Given the importance of healthy oceans for economic stability and “We urge the government to clarify that the Blue Planet Fund is safe and will continue to receive funding for the next five years.”
A group of 85 civil society organizations have written to Keir Starmer asking him to intervene and increase climate finance, raising the money by taxing fossil fuel producers – a strategy which polls show would be popular with voters. In a letter seen by The Guardian, they say: “(Cutting climate finance) would be a massive betrayal of the countries and communities on the frontline of the climate crisis and your government’s manifesto commitments to the UK public to be a climate leader and create a poverty-free world on a liveable planet. The UK’s provision of ICF is absolutely critical to delivering on these manifesto commitments.”
They add that the government could raise tens of billions of pounds a year by taxing oil and gas companies, redirecting subsidies to fossil fuels and the rich, who are responsible for a huge share of carbon emissions, for example through taxes on frequent flyers and private jets.
Catherine Pettengell, chief executive of Climate Action Network UK, which organized the letter, said: “Public polling tells us that the UK public believes the huge profits from fossil fuels and luxury travel should be taxed to pay for the damage they cause to our climate. “If we did this, the government could raise tens of billions of pounds a year to pay for climate action at home and abroad, reducing food prices and better protecting us all from the costly impacts of climate change. Yet the richest and biggest polluters continue to get off the hook, making profits, while the people who have done the least to cause the climate crisis bear its most significant costs. “This has to change.”
Last year, ministers were warned in a report compiled by the UK’s spy chiefs, the Joint Intelligence Committee, that the collapse of ecosystems in vulnerable parts of the world – including the Amazon and the extinction of coral reefs – could have serious impacts on UK national security and lead to food shortages, riots and war.
