Policy Updates

On February 1, 2025, the UK government has announced GBP22 million (US$26 million) in additional humanitarian assistance for Myanmar in 2024-2025 to support nearly one million vulnerable people.

This funding will provide essential healthcare, nutrition assistance, and treatment for diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. The support will also strengthen climate resilience by improving food security, water management, and disaster preparedness, helping communities withstand extreme weather events.

On January 24, 2025, the UK government’s discussions within the House of Commons on the Climate and Nature Bill were suspended.

This bill would make it legally binding for the UK to meet its international climate agreements. It was originally introduced by Liberal Democrat Roz Savage and was prevented over concerns from the Labour party that it was too ambitious and was unlikely to be upheld.

On December 3, 2024, UK Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward made a speech at the FfD4 Second Preparatory event, highlighting the need to focus on international financial architecture reforms, and foster a bigger, better, and fairer financial system.

The FfD4 outcome hopes to build upon the Addis Ababa Action Agenda’s focus on an enabling environment, particularly towards women’s economic empowerment.

It will focus on vulnerability and the countries at risk of being left behind in order to improve shock responsiveness and progress State Contingent Debt Clauses and Disaster Risk Financing.

BII also announced a US$30 million investment in InfraCredit, to promote local currency financing to support the clean energy transition.

On November 28, 2024 UK Development Minister Anneliese Dodds announced the provision of GBP2 billion (US$2.6 billion), and increase of 40%, over three years to the IDA to go towards projects promoting economic growth, tackling poverty, and addressing the impacts of climate change.

The UK pledge for IDA20 was GBP1.4 billion (US$1.8 billiom) which was nearly a 50% cut from it's IDA19 pledge which was GBP3.1 billion (US$4 billion).

BOND welcomed the UK’s decision to increase its contribution to the World Bank’s IDA 21^st replenishment, calling it an important show of leadership ahead of the pledging conference. However, they urged the government to avoid cuts to other assistance areas by increasing the aid budget beyond 0.5% of GNI and setting a clear path to restore it to 0.7% in the upcoming Spending Review.

On November 19, 2024, at COP29, New Zealand, the UK, and IISD joined COFFIS, a coalition founded by the Netherlands.

The coalition focuses on increasing transparency on the use of fossil fuel, improving international agreements to enable the phase-out process, and supporting each other in national phase-out efforts.

IISD was designated as an organizational partner to support the coalition and coordinate knowledge-sharing among participant countries. The coalition will report again on its progress in 2025.

On November 13, 2024, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced greater support for countries at the forefront of the climate emergency, and emphasized the need for new partnerships to help tackle illegal deforestation and support indigenous people.

At COP29, he committed to a new initiative supporting forest tenure rights for indigenous and local communities across the Amazon Basin. GBP9 million has also been made available to local scientists working to protect the Congo Basin, home to the world’s largest tropical peatlands to help protect vital natural CO2 storage areas.

GBP100 million of funding will be given for BII's new Mobilisation Facility, which will drive up to GBP500 million (US$647 million) of private capital into investments that support other countries in their transition towards net-zero.

Lammy also announced a guarantee of US$280 million to the new IFCAP initiative, which the UK is a founding partner together with the ADB, and other financing partners. The UK’s guarantee contribution will unlock US$1.2 billion of additional climate finance, at no upfront cost to the UK.

The UK's commitment to spend GBP11.6 billion (US$15 billion) of climate finance from 2021/2022 to 2025/2026 will continue to be honored. This includes at least GBP3 billion (US$3.8 billion) on nature, from which GBP1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) will be dedicated to protecting and restoring forests.

Lammy underscored the UK’s commitment to halting and reversing deforestation, to protect areas which play a key role in absorbing CO2 emissions. This includes announcing partnerships aimed at improving forest management and a new 10-year investment to reduce illegal logging. The program will build on long-running UK initiatives to improve the governance of forests, support the trade of sustainable forest products, and crackdown on illegal ones.

On November 11, 2024, the CGD, examined the GBP1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) UK ODA cuts within the context of the new government’s commitments, and explored what might be expected in the coming period.

In the new budget, total UK ODA, including the IDRCs, will drop from GBP15.3 billion (US$19.8 billion) in 2023, to GBP13.9 billion (US$18 billion) in 2024, and then rise to GBP14.3 billion (US$18.5 billion) in 2025.

The CGD noted that the UK needs to meet its ICF target which forms the UK’s commitment to international finance under the Paris Agreement. Given so much of UK ODA is made up of IDRCs, a significant proportion of what remains needs to be redistributed into climate finance, impacting emerging UK development policy priorities.

The UK is conducting reviews of their development policy led by Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, formerly Permanent Secretary at DFID, who has also held senior roles at the Bank of England, World Bank and IMF, London School of Economics, and Columbia University.

On November 10, 2024, climate experts report that wrote that Labour has been accused of failing to live up to its stance on climate leadership after October’s budget squeezed the funding the UK has available to help poorer countries deal with climate change, ahead of the COP summit,.

The UK is sending a team led by UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband who has promised to show global leadership on the climate crisis. Britain’s negotiating team acknowledges that the new climate finance goal must be larger than the previous agreement. However, activists warn that budget constraints being imposed by the Treasury put the UK in a difficult position.

The deal being agreed at COP29 will replace an old agreement from 2009 under which wealthier countries promised to provide poorer countries with US$100 billion annually to cope with climate change by 2020. Under this agreement, the UK committed to spending GBP11.6 billion (US$15 billion) in ODA for the climate crisis between FY2021/22 and FY2025/26.

The previous Conservative government had been slow to meet this pledge, with over GBP6 billion (US$7.7 billion) needing to be spent in 2024 for the UK is to meet its target.

On November 3, 2024, the UK's Foreign Secretary David Lammy, started his trip to Nigeria and South Africa by making a statement indicating that economic growth will underpin work in both Nigeria and South Africa, and agreeing to develop a new UK-South Africa Growth Plan and Strategic Partnership with Nigeria.

The Foreign Secretary will also announce the start of a 5-month consultation process, to ensure African voices inform and sit at the very heart of the UK’s new approach to the continent. Accommodating the diverse needs and ambitions of 54 countries, the consultation will guarantee the UK's relationships across the African continent are based on mutual respect and partnership.

In Nigeria, the Foreign Secretary will sign a modern and progressive Strategic Partnership – the first of its kind between the:abbrUK and Nigeria. This new dialogue will cover the breadth of the:abbrUK-Nigeria areas of shared cooperation from growth and jobs to national security, tackling the climate and nature crisis to strengthening people-to-people ties.

Travelling on to South Africa, the Foreign Secretary will agree to develop a new UK-South Africa Growth Plan. South Africa is the UK's largest trading partner on the continent and this plan will allow trade to flourish even more through collaboration on market access, a new UK Trade Partnership program to boost South Africa exports, and a new program to increase the number of agricultural jobs in rural South Africa.

On October 31, 2024, Bond, the UK network for organizations working in international development, outlined their disappointment with the Chancellor's budget announcement.

The Bond blog post outlines that the government has introduced new cuts to the UK assistance program and pushed off returning the UK ODA budget to 0.7% of GNI indefinitely.

Bond's analysis notes that UK ODA will drop sharply from GBP15.3billion (US$19.8 billion) or 0.58% of GNI in 2023, to GBP3.7 billion (US$4.8 billion), 0.5% of GNI in 2024, with a slight increase to GBP14.3 billion (US$18.5 billion) in 2025 for a total of 0.5% of the GNI.

Bond noted that there was a commitment to bring asylum costs down, including by ending expensive hotel accommodation, but no tangible commitment to reforming the current approach of using UK ODA to cover the costs.

Bond also note that there are already pressures on the UK aid budget with multilateral pledge commitments and climate commitments that need to be made including for the IDA and for the UK's ICF.