President Donald Trump is planning on giving millions to the U.N. mechanism designed to tackle man-made global warming, despite the president’s past budgets dinging funding payments propping up the program’s beefy budget.
Trump’s 2019 budget proposal provided a total of $6.4 million to pay U.S. dues to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its arm, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That dollar amount was never mentioned in the budget document White House’s Office of Management and Budget, according to a February report from E&E News.
The allocation would “enable the U.S. to effectively advance its interests in these bodies, and to reflect an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection,” a State Department official told E&E News. The UNFCC’s core budget for 2018 and 2019 is nearly $60 million, according to the fund’s proposed budget proposal.
Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget plan nixed funding for all U.N. climate programs. The administration crafted the budget under the pledge not to advance U.N. climate objectives. It eliminated dues for the UNFCCC and IPCC, along with the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which provided aide for poor countries attempting to finance various climate change programs. (RELATED: Trump Pulled Out Of The Paris Climate Accords, But The US Is Spending Billions To Implement It)
Former President Barack Obama pledged $3 billion to the GCF – he plowed $1 billion into the moribund fund before the Trump administration took over. Trump — as part of his decision to withdraw from the Paris accord — halted U.S. contributions in 2017 and refused to give the remaining $2 billion. The move cut the GCF’s entire budget by 20 percent.
The U.S. is also the World Bank’s largest supporter and shareholder owning 17 percent of organization’s shares. The next largest owner, Japan, owns just under 8 percent. Several bills moving through Congress would grant the World Bank, along with other Multilateral Development Banks, roughly $1.8 billion.
The World Bank works with poor and developing countries to improve their infrastructure. The bank seeks to “galvanize international and national efforts to end extreme poverty globally within a generation and to promote ‘shared prosperity,’ a sustainable increase in the well-being of the poorer segments of society.” The bank’s overarching goal is to bring the percentage of world’s population living in extreme poverty – on less than $1.90 a day – to 3 percent.
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