Dipak Kurmi
President Donald Trump’s January 7 Memorandum, announcing the United States’ withdrawal from 66 international organisations, marks one of the most consequential ruptures in the global climate governance architecture since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. The decision goes far beyond symbolic scepticism of multilateralism. By abandoning 31 United Nations entities, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, along with 35 additional bodies such as the Green Climate Fund and the International Renewable Energy Agency, Washington has effectively removed itself from the core institutions that shape emissions reporting, climate negotiations, scientific assessment, and financial assistance. The move has sent shockwaves through the climate community, but its most profound consequences will be felt far from American shores, particularly across the Global South, where climate change is no longer a distant threat but a daily existential reality.
The withdrawal represents a sharp turn towards climate isolationism at a moment when collective action is indispensable. For decades, the United States has been a paradoxical actor in climate politics: historically one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, yet also a critical source of scientific expertise, diplomatic weight, and financial support for global climate initiatives. Trump’s decision severs all three pillars at once. US scientists will no longer formally contribute to IPCC assessment reports, diminishing the breadth and depth of the world’s most authoritative climate science. American negotiators will no longer participate in Conference of Parties deliberations under the UNFCCC, leaving the world’s largest economy without a voice in shaping Nationally Determined Contributions. Most damaging of all, the exit terminates US involvement in climate finance mechanisms, dismantling already fragile trust between the Global North and South.
For developing regions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the timing could hardly be worse. These regions together account for less than 20 per cent of historical global emissions, yet they are disproportionately exposed to the harshest impacts of climate change. Rising sea levels, intensifying cyclones, prolonged droughts, and lethal heatwaves are already eroding livelihoods, infrastructure, and food security. Climate vulnerability in the Global South is not an abstract statistical concept; it is a lived experience measured in lost harvests, forced migration, and mounting public debt. The United States’ decision to walk away from multilateral climate commitments deepens this vulnerability by stripping away crucial financial and institutional support.
One of the most immediate casualties of the US withdrawal is the Green Climate Fund, which has channelled approximately $19 billion into mitigation and adaptation projects in the world’s most vulnerable regions. These funds have financed cyclone-resistant infrastructure in Bangladesh, climate-resilient agriculture in Kenya, and a range of adaptation projects designed to protect communities that contributed little to the problem they now face. Washington’s exit leaves a yawning $100 billion gap in global climate finance, a figure that Europe, already strained by the immense costs of post-conflict recovery in Ukraine and its own green transition, is in no position to fill alone. The collapse of this financial architecture reinforces a long-standing grievance of the Global South: that the Global North acknowledges historical responsibility in rhetoric but retreats when concrete obligations come due.
The weakening of the IPCC further compounds this imbalance. American research institutions and scientists have historically played a significant role in climate modelling, data analysis, and peer review processes. Their absence does not invalidate IPCC reports, but it undeniably erodes their comprehensiveness and credibility at a time when scientific consensus is under political assault. Similarly, the US exit from the UNFCCC leaves Washington outside negotiations over emissions targets and implementation mechanisms, a self-inflicted marginalisation that UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell aptly described as a colossal own-goal. For the Global South, however, this is less a diplomatic miscalculation than an act of abandonment, perpetuating a historical pattern in which those least responsible bear the greatest costs.
India’s position within this unfolding crisis is particularly precarious. Home to 1.4 billion people and ranked at the top of the Climate Risk Index, India sits on the frontline of climate impacts. Recent years have seen catastrophic floods displace more than ten million people, while extreme heatwaves and erratic monsoons have devastated crops and strained urban infrastructure. Climate models for 2026 forecast an even harsher outlook, driven by residual El Niño effects that threaten to intensify rainfall variability and heat stress. Against this backdrop, India’s climate strategy has relied not only on domestic policy but also on multilateral cooperation, a foundation now destabilised by the US withdrawal.
The IPCC has estimated that India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change could catalyse $500 billion in green investment, transforming the country’s energy and industrial landscape. Yet the exit of the United States jeopardises critical channels of technical assistance, particularly through IRENA. The agency’s policy interventions and knowledge-sharing platforms played a notable role in reducing India’s solar tariffs by nearly 85 per cent since 2010, enabling the country to emerge as one of the world’s largest solar markets. The loss of such support risks slowing the pace of renewable deployment at a moment when speed is essential.
Financial uncertainty looms even larger. The Green Climate Fund had pledged $2.5 billion to India for coastal defence projects and the protection of Himalayan glaciers, funding now suspended in a cloud of uncertainty. Beyond the immediate loss of capital, the US decision sends a damaging signal to private investors that the multilateral climate finance ecosystem is fracturing. This perception, combined with a 7 per cent depreciation of the rupee, is likely to raise borrowing costs for Indian projects precisely when affordable finance is most needed. Geopolitically, India also finds itself constrained, unable to effectively deploy World Trade Organisation strategies on climate-related trade measures in the absence of cohesive multilateral backing.
The ramifications extend beyond India to the broader architecture of climate finance and technology transfer. The United States had pledged $11.4 billion in climate finance by 2024, a commitment honoured unevenly but symbolically significant. Full disengagement not only nullifies future contributions but also shifts implicit pressure onto emerging economies such as India and Brazil to fill the gap, despite their own development challenges. This undermines Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, which anchors Global South climate ambitions to a new collective quantified goal for finance. With US observers absent and commitments abandoned, the credibility of this pillar erodes, threatening the viability of many national climate plans.
Technology transfer, long a contentious issue, also faces renewed stagnation. US advances in battery storage and green hydrogen were fostered within UNFCCC platforms and helped shape policy frameworks worldwide. In India, these global policy signals influenced Production Linked Incentive schemes that attracted nearly $25 billion in foreign direct investment. The retreat of the US from multilateral forums disrupts this virtuous cycle, slowing the diffusion of innovation at a time when rapid technological scaling is indispensable for both mitigation and adaptation.
Yet Trump’s retreat also underscores a deeper truth: the precariousness of a climate regime overly dependent on a single hegemon. The Global South can no longer afford vulnerability to the political whims of Washington. India has already begun recalibrating its diplomatic and economic strategies, looking towards alternative forums such as BRICS climate cooperation and trilateral engagements that may increasingly resemble an India–EU axis rather than an India–EU–US partnership. In this shifting landscape, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is poised to play a larger role in renewable energy markets, offering both opportunity and risk. For African nations, Chinese investment could accelerate clean energy access, but it also raises concerns about debt dependency and strategic leverage.
Adaptation presents another unresolved challenge. Many developing countries rely heavily on US satellite data and World Meteorological Organisation alert systems for early warning of extreme weather events. Disruptions in these services could have immediate human consequences, particularly in regions vulnerable to cyclones, floods, and droughts. The erosion of such global public goods reveals how deeply interwoven climate resilience has become with international cooperation.
Amid these disruptions, opportunities for reinvention remain. India’s International Solar Alliance, now comprising over 150 member countries, represents a South-South alternative that seeks to mobilise $1 trillion in solar investment by 2030 while bypassing the bureaucratic inertia of traditional UN processes. Domestically, India’s proposed $120 billion green budget for 2026 signals a commitment to self-reliance, spanning sectors from electrolysers and electric vehicles to grid-scale storage. At the global level, pressure is mounting on the European Union and Japan to double their climate finance pledges, with the G20 emerging as a potential platform for advancing the idea of finance without borders.
The climate crisis does not pause for geopolitical realignments or ideological retreats. It advances relentlessly, indifferent to national elections and executive memoranda. Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the architecture of global climate cooperation may reshape institutions, alliances, and markets, but it does not alter the physics of a warming planet. For the Global South, adaptation has become a condition of survival, not a negotiable policy choice. In confronting this reality, the challenge is not merely to endure a world without American leadership on climate, but to build a more resilient, equitable, and genuinely multilateral response that can endure beyond the rise and fall of any single power.
(The writer can be reached at dipakkurmiglpltd@gmail.com)
