Recommendation 1

The government has prioritised maintaining headline ICF3 spending commitments under the constraints of its ODA budget, as opposed to striving to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes. The government’s changes to ICF accounting methodology have undermined the impact, additionality and credibility of ICF3, and any future commitments, by counting reclassified humanitarian ODA towards UK ICF – despite the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requirement for climate finance to be new and additional. We are concerned that these changes—in conjunction with the scale of ODA cuts and inflation—risk compromising the UK’s ability to: • meet its legal obligation under the UNFCCC to provide new and additional resources to low- and middle-income countries; • meet its fair share of the New Collective Quantified Goal and its commitment to tripling adaptation finance by 2035; • maintain its international leadership role and political capital on climate and nature; and • retain partner countries’ trust in the UNFCCC negotiation process. (Conclusion, Paragraph 17)