Context Newsroom, 25 June 2025
Government representatives and delegates from civil society, who have been meeting in Bonn to prepare for the next U.N. climate conference, COP30, will be acutely aware of how dramatically the world has changed since the last COP took place in Azerbaijan last year.
In just seven months, sweeping cuts to global aid and escalating threats to multilateral cooperation have dealt a brutal blow to international efforts to save the planet from environmental collapse.
The impacts of this assault on foreign aid will be felt hardest in low-income countries, despite them having contributed the least to carbon emissions.
Limited government capacity and minimal insurance coverage in these countries leave vulnerable communities entirely defenceless, allowing a single flood or wildfire to wipe out people’s homes, assets and livelihoods in minutes.
Over the past 30 years, more than 90% of deaths and 60% of economic losses from climate disasters have happened in developing countries.
It bears repeating: the world’s poorest are paying the highest price for a crisis they did not create.
In 2020, the World Bank estimated that 132 million more people would be pushed into poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change.
President Donald Trump’s abrupt USAID cuts, followed by the retreat of other major donors as defence spending increasingly takes precedence over international solidarity, will drive this figure even higher.
Amid a profound upheaval to global aid, this frightening prediction must spur governments to consider alternative, more imaginative ways to protect people in poverty from climate change.