On July 14, the UN’s Adaptation Committee put fund managers, negotiators, and development bankers on a video call to work through a problem that clearly has them rattled. The money is drying up.
The Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Adaptation Fund all sent people to explain how developing countries can tap them for cash. What they mostly did was ask for more. The reason they are running short, though, is news that ought to please anyone who pays U.S. taxes. In February 2025, the United States rescinded roughly $4 billion in outstanding pledges to the Green Climate Fund. We were the first country to do it. This spring, the United Kingdom followed, halving its pledge from £1.6 billion to about £815 million.
The people on the call treated this as a crisis. For anyone who works for a living and pays the bills, it looks more like a rescue.
It’s worth being clear about what these funds are. They hand out grants, not loans. Hansol Park of the Green Climate Fund said about 80% of its public-sector adaptation money is grant based, and the Adaptation Fund gives grants exclusively. Grant means gift — no repayment, no return, nothing back. When Washington pledged $4 billion, it was pledging to give $4 billion away and call it climate policy.
Where does the money go? The funds prefer to answer that in their own vocabulary. Ask what they finance, and you get “readiness,” “institutional capacity,” “capacity building,” “accreditation support,” “project preparation,” and “locally led adaptation.” Some of it does buy physical things, water systems and farms and flood defenses. A good deal of it, though, pays to build and staff the offices that write the grant applications in the first place.
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