As Climate Disasters Intensify, Funding for Preparedness Programs Is Being Cut

Tenzin Dolma Ghale sat on the floor of a makeshift shelter in Nepal for survivors of the country's recent deadly floods and said she had nothing left but the clothes she was wearing. Her entire village and members of her family were swept away by a surge of water and debris that killed more than 1,450 people and left over 6,000 missing. "It's all finished," she said.

Ghale is one of millions of people living with the consequences of climate-related disasters. As those events grow more severe, international aid for climate adaptation and disaster preparedness has been slashed, leaving countries exposed to billions of dollars in avoidable damage and shrinking recovery funds. Harjeet Singh, founding director of the New Delhi-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said the world needs trillions of dollars each year but that developed countries have not met their obligation.

The abrupt U.S. foreign aid cuts of 2025 eliminated or sharply reduced programs serving millions of people, and reductions by other major donors deepened the crisis. One casualty was SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya, a joint effort of the U.S. Agency for International Development, NASA and the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, known as ICIMOD. Covering Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, it used satellites and geospatial analysis to support disaster risk reduction, water resources and land cover work. It also provided flood risk services, worked with the Nepal Red Cross Society on risk communication and offered more than 170 public data sets on glaciers, disasters and vulnerability.

When its funding ended, so did landslide forecasting, daily flood monitoring, training and regional collaboration. The loss comes as climate change drives rapid glacier melt, shifting monsoons and more frequent floods, landslides and glacial lake outburst floods, which can release millions of cubic meters of water and debris within hours. ICIMOD says nearly 2 billion people live in or downstream of the region and depend on it for food, water and energy security. A new report by the consultancy Systemiq, produced with ICIMOD, found Himalayan glaciers are losing mass 65% faster than a decade ago, yet only about 0.1% of an estimated 40,000 glaciers are monitored in detail on a sustained basis.

The risks are widespread. In northern Pakistan, melting glaciers have created 3,044 glacial lakes, more than 30 of them judged likely to cause floods in areas home to over 7 million people, according to the U.N. Development Program. Research from Switzerland's University of Lausanne points to a growing threat in Afghanistan, and over 130 high-altitude lakes in India are at risk of flooding. The 2022 Pakistan floods killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage, while the region lost at least $7 billion to extreme weather in 2025, according to the Emergency Events Database, which is itself at risk of closure because of USAID cuts.

In a statement to The Associated Press, the U.S. State Department said it supports Nepal's flood warning capacity through programs with the World Meteorological Organization and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It noted that SERVIR-HKH ended in January 2025 but that its tools remain active through ICIMOD.

Neha Rai, a climate finance expert at ICIMOD, said the cuts will have cascading effects for years. She compared them to suddenly halting cancer research funding and said climate risk requires long-term observation and institutions that cannot be switched on and off. She added that losing cross-border programs has hampered information sharing among governments and scientists, which matters in a region where upstream events directly affect downstream countries.

The cuts reflect a broader pattern. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that official development assistance from its Development Assistance Committee members, including the U.S., fell 23% in 2025, the largest annual drop on record. Donors such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and Canada have also announced large reductions, redirecting money to defense and domestic priorities.

Meanwhile, ActionAid International reports that Global South countries spend roughly 225 times more on debt repayments than they receive in grant-based climate finance. Teresa Andersen of the group described a "toxic relationship" between the climate and debt crises, saying nations borrow to recover from disasters and then cut clean energy and preparedness spending to repay the loans. Richard Sherman, a board member of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, said disaster recovery funds are also losing money and are not equipped for the expected rise in disasters. "We're not expecting developed countries to act as an ATM," he said, but helping vulnerable countries adapt would leave them less likely to suffer such impacts.