UK aid cuts will cause untold damage, wildlife charities warn – as they fear for future of key programmes

UK protection aid institutions warned that the key to protecting wildlife around the world will have a dramatic effect of the government’s interruption of the international aid budget – it damages a life line as costs for fragile ecosystems and is afraid and fearing many organizations for the future.

While cutting England in general external aid 0.3 percent out of 0.3 percent of the budget 0.5 percent show that gross national income (GGI) will receive a hundreds of millions of pounds of nature support of data, especially sharp hit. While the government says that he has committed to protecting nature and fighting against the climate crisis, Independent It has revealed evidence that the outages have already taken a destructive blow to the protection programs.

An organization is the African peoples and Wildlife (APW) charity institution that carries out protection in Tanzania. According to APW’s founding partner Lialy Lichtenfeld, the aid organization has two projects this year, which is generously financed by the UK AID.

The first of these projects supports the protection activities in Natron Lake, a critical ecosystem, which is a critical ecosystem that hosts the wide flamingo reproductive areas where APW carries out activities such as grassland restoration and sustainable grazing support to help APW live in balance and adapt to the changing air conditioner. The second project is about providing practical tools for people to manage the human-wildlife conflict, especially for elephants and large carnivores.

Finance for the Natron Lake project ends at the end of June 2025, the second project must end later this year. Both were financed by the UK government -backed 10.6 million £ Darwin initiative, which supported approximately 52 projects globally. However, Currently not open to new funding tours Because of the uncertainty around the financing. Lichtenfeld says that leaving a space that may not be renewed in financing is extremely damaging for APW’s work.

Lichtenfeld says, “As we’ve experienced, you don’t just dismantle a particular project.

The grants, which philanthropy expects to come this year, are probably about 50 percent less than last year ”, Lichtenfeld continues and the charity plans to make some major cuts in the activities on the ground. “We do everything we can to keep the bare bones of the projects, to keep relationships alive and to show the communities in which they are not forgotten, or he adds.

‘First Class Science’

Matthew Gould, CEO of the London Zoology Association (ZSL), Matthew Gould, Independent The expected interruptions for wildlife and protection will be very damaging for both the natural world and people connected to it.

“Considering that more than half of the global GDP depends on healthy ecosystems, it will be a wrong economy to help nature.” “The return on investment in nature is high, but the cost of not investing is higher.”

British government financing ZSL projects included the Rhino Impact Investment Project, led to the creation of a turning point.Rhino bondIt is an investment product of $ 150 million that enables rich investors to directly invest to increase the critical danger of rhinos and also provide significant local employment in protection. Another ZSL project, DaringIt monitors the environmental commitments of companies that produce goods that can direct the forest. Now, more than 50 percent of palm oil products are traded globally.

Gould was among a series of England protection leaders, including the CEOs of WWF, Greenpeace and Conservation International, who recently claimed that the Conservation International will be a “great target ına to protect the British government.

“Investing in nature investment is a strategic, cost -effective pole of the UK’s global development agenda… British Nature Programs provide extraordinary return in modest investments, in the letter shared with only Independent.

The Bird Charity Authority RSPB is another organization on the influence of the UK aid cuts. Philanthropy uses money from the British charity budget.

“Foreign, Nations Community and Development Office (FCDO), the British aid budget, has been a life line for some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world, helping to stop their destruction and help to breathe a new life for habitats.”

He allows charities such as the UK charity fund, RSPB to blend science with deep local information at world standards, Luxton, Luxton allows England to play an important role both in protecting wildlife and supporting communities.

“We are deeply concerned that the protection efforts can be withdrawn, with the shortage of transparency of financing cuts, Lu said Luxton, Luxton adds. “If the UK is serious about global leadership in climate and nature, constantly investing in nature and climate should remain in the front and center.”

Keir Starmer claimed that when the UK announced aid deductions, Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, Global Health and Nature and Climate would be the key Areas where England will continue to support. And one Any detail about protection or nature In particular, the July FCDO annual report showed that the episode would increase climate and nature expenditures from 414 million £ 414 million in 2024/5 to 2025/6.

However, the information received by Ian Mitchell at the Global Development Center through the demand for Freedom of Information (FOI) reveals a more complex story.

FoI shows that approximately 35 percent of financing for nature -oriented aid programs between 2021 and 2024 were distributed by the other two state departments: 173 million pounds of environmental environment, Food and Forestry Department (Defra) and Energy Safety and Net Zero Office (Desnz), which provides £ 304 million.

FoI also includes expenditure estimates for the amount of aid to which different government departments are spent between 2025/26 and 2026/7 financial years – this is the Foreign Aid of the UK aid expenditures to reach 0.3 percent – Defra’s foreign aid, desnz assistance decreased to 45.2 percent, desnz’in 5.15 percent of the desnz help to decrease to 245 percent.

The interruptions for these two departments are much more upright than the deductions in which FCDO was carried out in the same period – and according to Mitchell, considering that a much larger share than these two departments is spent according to nature, according to Mitchell, it means a particularly dramatic fund kick for nature and protection.

“This falls to Desnez, and Defra’s aid budget is more upright than 30 percent to FCDO in the same period, Mit says Mitchell. “This is the relatively priority placement of international expenditures of these departments, and will mean the decrease in international biological diversity and protection efforts.”

A government spokesman told Independent: “This government is determined to provide international climate financing now and in the future, and to decide to present our international commitments as well as other developed countries and financial providers.”

He added that Britain plans to submit the ambition to present £ 11.6 billion in COP26 in 2021 by Boris Johnson in 2021 between 2021 and March 2026, Boris Johnson.

‘Hard a few years’

Anouska Perram, a temporary coordinator of a protection aid organization called the Forest Peoples Program (FPP), which received the UK aid finance for a forestry project in both Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. In particular, the FPP works to try and reverse environmental degradation in distant forest areas by promoting sustainable forest management traditions among domestic communities and at the same time lobbying for policy reforms to support land rights.

“We are definitely not a protection organization – we are a human rights organization. But supporting the protection of society leadership helps both human rights and protection goals,” he says.

FPP has been working with some communities in Congo for more than 30 years – but perram is now very worried about the future.

“The FCDO -supported project needs to end next year, and we know that the financing appearance for us and other organizations looks very bad forward, or he says. “It is clear that support for nature and climate with both the UK and other bilateral organizations will decrease in the future.”

For now, all protection organizations such as APW and FPP are to reduce costs, apply for new financing, and hope for the best.

Lichtenfeld says, “It will definitely be a hard few years. There’s no question about it,” he says. “We have a tremendously dedicated dedicated team and we will do our best to move the business.”

This article is part of the independent Refunding global aid project