The US has withdrawn from a flagship global climate financing programme by rich nations to help developing countries quit coal, putting the $45bn effort in jeopardy as a result of the latest green retreat by Donald Trump.
The US president, who has called climate change a hoax, has made sweeping cuts to climate programmes since coming to power, axing funding and jobs even at critical US domestic weather and science agencies, such as the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The US was a core member of the so-called Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), an initiative launched in 2021 to assist South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam to abandon fossil fuels and move to renewable energy through a combination of loans, grants and private finance. It was designed to incentivise those countries to cut emissions in return for funding.