The UK Government should be doing more to deliver on its commitments to provide climate finance for some of the world’s poorest countries, the House of Commons International Development Committee has found.
The Committee’s new report explores the UK’s International Climate Finance (ICF), a commitment set up to support low-income and the most climate-vulnerable countries responding to climate change, which plays a crucial role in fulfilling the UK’s obligations under the Paris Agreement.
It comes as the world prepares for the El Niño phenomenon to further amplify the climate crisis with more extreme weather events worldwide.
Recent cuts to the UK's international aid budget have stopped the UK from fully following through on its ICF commitments - the report states:
“Cuts to the UK's Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget by successive governments have been harmful and undermined the UK’s ability to deliver its International Climate Finance (ICF) commitments in a meaningful, transparent and credible way.”
It also highlights the detrimental impact of changes to accounting methodology that have seen humanitarian ODA reclassified to count towards the UK’s ICF commitments, commenting:
“The government has prioritised maintaining headline ICF3 spending commitments under the constraints of its Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget, as opposed to striving to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes.”
In view of the changes and a diminishing ODA budget, the report stresses that the UK’s future ICF spending should be more strategic, and accompanied by targets to generate the greatest impact and protect it from being further eroded.
“Without clear spending targets or better geographic prioritisation, the government risks sidelining low-income and other highly climate-vulnerable countries, and leaves the UK's ICF susceptible to being diverted for domestic and other political priorities”, the Committee warns.
The UK announced in March 2026 that it is committed to spending around £6 billion of ODA as ICF over the three financial years from 2026-27 to 2028-29. It also stated that, during this period, it would deliver an additional £6.7 billion of public investment to drive international climate and nature outcomes. Alongside this, the UK plans to mobilise billions more in finance from the private sector.
Elsewhere in the report, MPs are calling on the government to redouble its efforts to meet the UK’s international climate change commitments after slashing the aid budget. The report says:
“Against the backdrop of a shrinking ODA budget, the government must leverage its entire toolkit to mobilise additional sources of public and private finance to advance ICF impact and to meet the UK's climate mitigation and adaptation obligations under the Paris Agreement.”
Commenting on the report, International Development Committee Chair Sarah Champion said:
"Our report comes at a time when it has never been more critical to mitigate and manage the impacts of climate change, which is swiftly reversing development progress in vulnerable countries. “We have recently witnessed this with the disaster in Nepal, while El Niño threatens to trigger further humanitarian crises by worsening water security and pushing more people into acute food shortages.
“Against this backdrop, the global community has a responsibility to step up and the UK should be leading by example to encourage the biggest emitters to follow suit. However, we heard how ODA cuts have caused critical damage to the UK's ability to demonstrate leadership in the climate space. On top of this, we found that rather than striving to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes, the government has been cutting corners to maintain headline climate spending commitments.
“With the climate crisis rapidly intensifying and an unprecedented El Niño on the way, I hope the government will take note of our report. The Foreign Secretary has stressed that this government is serious about its global leadership on development and climate. But without greater urgency, and substantial investment in mitigation and adaptation, climate change will continue to push the poorest climate-vulnerable countries deeper into instability, while also increasing resource competition which drives conflict and displacement."
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