Nearly a tenth of global climate finance could be under threat as US president Donald Trump’s aid cuts risk wiping out huge swathes of spending overseas, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Last year, the US announced that it had increased its climate aid for developing countries roughly seven-fold over the course of Joe Biden’s presidency, reaching $11bn per year.

This likely amounts to more than 8% of all international climate finance in 2024.

However, any progress in US climate finance has been thrown into disarray by the new administration.

Trump has halted US foreign aid and threatened to cancel virtually all US Agency for International Development (USAid) projects, with climate funds identified as a prime target.

USAid has provided around a third of US climate finance in recent years, reaching nearly $3bn in 2023, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Another $4bn of US funding for the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) has also been cancelled by the president’s administration.

One expert tells Carbon Brief that more climate funds will likely end up on the “cutting block”.

Another warns of an “enormous gulf” to meeting the new global $300bn climate-finance goal nations agreed last year, if the US stops reporting – let alone providing – any official climate finance.

Carbon Brief’s analysis draws together available data to explain how the Trump administration’s cuts endanger global efforts to help developing countries tackle climate change.

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For decades, coal mines operated by the world's largest mining multinational with the support of the world's largest asset manager have polluted the rivers and aquifers of Mpumalanga province, with serious consequences for the population, say local NGOs and experts. An investigation in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Daily Maverick.

For decades, coal mines operated by the world's largest mining multinational with the support of the world's largest asset manager have polluted the rivers and aquifers of Mpumalanga province, with serious consequences for the population, say local NGOs and experts. An investigation in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Daily Maverick.

Countries have agreed at the resumed COP16 talks in Rome to a strategy for “mobilising” at least $200bn per year by 2030 to help developing countries conserve biodiversity.

Nations also agreed for the first time to a “permanent arrangement” for providing biodiversity finance to developing nations, “future-proofing” the flow of funds past 2030.

Faced with a highly unstable geopolitical landscape and a previous set of talks that ended in disarray in Colombia, countries forged a path to consensus on a set of texts in what many nations celebrated as a win for multilateralism in uncertain times.

The agreement on finance comes despite the world’s largest biodiversity donor – the US, which has never been a formal party within these talks – recently deciding to withdraw most of its nature funding in a foreign-aid freeze under Donald Trump.

Many European countries who signed onto the agreement have also recently cut their aid budgets.

Nations also agreed on two texts for tracking their progress towards achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

The GBF is a landmark deal first made in 2022 aiming to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

Colombian politician and COP16 president Susana Muhamad received a lengthy standing ovation for her role in guiding parties to consensus in the early hours of Friday morning in Rome.

But, amid celebrations, some countries cautioned that a vast amount of progress will be needed to have a chance of halting and reversing biodiversity loss in just five years.

Some three-quarters of nations have still not submitted their UN biodiversity plans for how they will achieve the targets of the GBF – four months after the deadline.

And a recent investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted UN biodiversity plans do not commit to the GBF’s flagship target of protecting 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030.

In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country in the world to ban the production, import, marketing and use of polythene bags, a type of single-use plastic bag. The ban, made through the Bangladesh Environment Conservation (Amendment) Act, was seen as a major environmental milestone. Yet by 2020, per capita plastic consumption had tripled from 3 kg in 2002 to 9 kg, according to a 2021 World Bank study.

For the riverine country, plastic pollution worsened flooding, clogged drainage systems and contaminated waterways. The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority estimates that 12-13 feet of plastic waste now sits at the bottom of the Buriganga River, a lifeline for the capital, Dhaka.

As Bangladesh’s new government, in power since October 2024, launches a renewed crackdown on plastic bags, it is worth examining why the original ban failed, what lessons can be learned, and whether the new act can succeed.