Collapse in help for local weather disaster is fuelling wars all over the world, says David Miliband | EUROtoday

Rich international locations ought to present considerably extra international help – within the type of grants and donations, fairly than loans – to assist the world’s most fragile international locations adapt to the local weather disaster, David Miliband has instructed The Independent.

The former international secretary, who has been the CEO of humanitarian NGO the International Rescue Committee (IRC) since 2013, mentioned that the escalating local weather disaster is fuelling conflicts all over the world, and extra help for local weather adaptation is required to assist fight this.

“We need grant-based aid not just for vaccinations and to treat things like malnutritionbut also to fund climate resilience,” he tells The Independent after a speech on the Chatham House. Such financing is vital not solely as a result of the “last thing fragile states need is more debts”, Miliband continues, but in addition as a result of it is rather arduous for local weather adaptation efforts to draw cash in such international locations.

“Protecting communities so that their livestock don’t get washed away in a flash flood is a long term benefit that is worth funding,” he continued. “But [these interventions] are hard to make investable for the private sector – and that’s triply or quadruply hard in fragile or conflict-affected states.”

Pointing to a current IRC report itemizing 20 international locations almost certainly to face worsening humanitarian crises this 12 months, Miliband says: “I think the contribution of climate change to conflict is underestimated”. He factors that almost all of the 20 international locations featured within the IRC report are located across the equator, which is thought to be a extremely climate-stressed a part of the world.

“Some of the biggest conflicts that exist at the moment, notably in Ukraine and Gaza, aren’t climate conflicts, so it’s important that we are disciplined in how we speak about this,” he continued. “But climate change is a major contributing factor to resource stress, which is known as one of the major factors driving conflict globally.”

‘The poorer you are, the less help you get’

Climate adaptation can embody every little thing from mangrove forests to guard coasts, to the distribution of seeds for drought-resistent crops, to the development of flood defences. That is totally different to “mitigation”, which is about decreasing carbon emissions, and is an space that consultants are far more assured round attracting non-aid-based funding in fragile international locations, because of the plummeting prices of renewable vitality applied sciences.

Given the immense stress that help budgets have come below over the previous 12 months, with Donald Trump slashing US funding and the UK additionally planning important cuts – in addition to the massively insufficient ranges of international help made obtainable for adaptation in recent times – help businesses have instructed The Independent in current months that they’ve been working arduous to drive personal funding in local weather adaptation.

However, information from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) exhibits that solely round 10 per cent of cash directed in the direction of local weather adaptation in creating international locations has historically come from the personal sector. What’s extra, evaluation produced final 12 months from the NGO Mercy Corps modelled that, even in a finest case situation, solely round 15 per cent of adaptation wants might be met by the personal sector in creating international locations.

“The challenge that we face is about helping people sustain their livelihoods in the face of a changing climate which in some cases is very difficult, but not impossible, to adapt to,” Miliband tells The Independent.

“We have to really shift this inverse relationship at the moment, where the poorer and more exposed you are to climate change, the less money you get for climate adaptation,” he provides.

‘Unprecedented moment’

The IRC report Miliband mentions, Emergency Watchlist for 2026: An evaluation of the 20 international locations almost certainly to face worsening humanitarian crises this 12 months was launched final month. In it, Sudan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories prime the record. Collectively, the 20 international locations signify 12 per cent of the world’s inhabitants, however 50 per cent of individuals in excessive poverty and 89 per cent of individuals in humanitarian want.

The report describes the world as being at an “unprecedented moment”, with “global support to address them is collapsing”. Indeed, IRC itself needed to lower its funds by some $400m (£290m) within the wake of help cuts introduced by the US and others final 12 months, which led to some 6,000 workers being made redundant.

The report, helps Miliband’s view that the local weather disaster is an underappreciated consider amplifying conflicts all over the world additionally stresses how conflicts internationally are driving humanitarian conditions, highlighting how the 61 conflicts recorded globally in 2024 was greater than had been recorded in any 12 months because the Second World. Some 18 international locations recorded greater than 1,000 battle deaths in 2025, and the 1,000 folks killed in search of medical care within the first six months of 2025 is a complete 60-times better than throughout the identical interval in 2024.

Mr Miliband’s feedback come a number of months after 10 of the world’s conflict-affected international locations instructed The Independent on the Cop30 UN local weather talks in Brazil that battle and battle has been a “blind spot” constantly missed in local weather talks.

They warned that they’re among the many most weak to impacts of the local weather disaster, however are solely receiving 10 per cent of worldwide local weather help, which is stopping them from adapting and constructing resilience to the devastating impacts of the local weather disaster.

The feedback got here a 12 months after a community of conflict-affected and climate-vulnerable international locations was shaped at Cop29 in Azerbaijan in 2024, which got here with a name for $20 billion in help yearly to satisfy these international locations’ local weather adaptation wants.

At Cop30, nonetheless, the Brazilian presidency had ignored the international locations’ requires the topic to be a key a part of the agenda, regardless of high-profile conversations round local weather finance in different areas.

This article was produced as a part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid challenge