The U.S. announced it will abandon the world’s largest climate fund a day after President Donald Trump moved to withdraw from 66 international organizations, including the world’s benchmark climate treaty.
The Green Climate Fund was established in 2010 and serves as the main financial mechanism for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. It has provided billions of dollars to help poorer nations grapple with the effects of extreme weather, drought and rising seas.
The move follows Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he’s leaving the UNFCCC as part of a sweeping effort to remove the U.S. from organizations that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called “wasteful, ineffective and harmful.”
The president set a tone for isolating the U.S. on climate change on his first day in office, when he said the country would leave the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global pact aimed at holding temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. That move will take effect later this month. Departing the Green Climate Fund, or GCF, is the latest effort that could have destabilizing effects on international programs to reduce climate pollution.
“Our nation will no longer fund radical organizations like the GCF whose goals run contrary to the fact that affordable, reliable energy is fundamental to economic growth and poverty reduction,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Thursday.
The U.S. will immediately withdraw from the fund and give up its board seat, Bessent added.
The vacancy will not affect the board or the fund’s operations, the fund noted.
“GCF reaffirms its commitment to fight climate change, which remains a fundamental threat to international development, security and long-term prosperity,” the organization said in a statement. “Central to this mandate is GCF’s support for affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy, recognizing that access to cost-effective energy is essential for economic growth, poverty reduction, and development.”
The fund has approved more than $19 billion for over 300 projects since 2015. Aiming to cut emissions and build resilience, it has funded efforts to reduce deforestation, support disaster warning systems and protect agriculture. One of its latest projects will provide about $300 million to Jordan for addressing persistent water shortages.
“It helps developing countries respond to the very real impacts of climate change so there is a lot of support for the work the GCF does and the impact the GCF has,” said Bella Tonkonogy, a Treasury adviser during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The fund has long been in Republican crosshairs. In February, Trump canceled $4 billion in outstanding pledges the U.S. had previously committed to under Democratic administrations. It was the first time a country has rescinded a commitment to the GCF.
In that way, Thursday’s announcement won’t come as a surprise since the U.S. wasn’t expected to provide funding under the Trump administration. But it will mean the U.S. no longer has input on how the money will be deployed, and it could put more pressure on other countries to step up funding in the future at a time when many nations are also scaling back overseas development assistance.
“So these institutions are really going to have to figure out their financial model and make it less reliant on external funding and that’s going to be a huge challenge,” said Clemence Landers, a former Treasury official who now serves as a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.
