USAID Climate Programs Fighting Extremism and Unrest Are Closing Down
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Heat, drought and floods are growing security risks, Western defense officials say, feeding instability and violence that could prove costly in the long term.
Somini Sengupta has reported extensively in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.
Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D.
One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in the strategic port city of Basra, Iraq, where dry taps had caused violent anti-government protests. The aid group’s oldest program, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, ran a forecasting system that allowed aid workers in places like war-torn South Sudan to prepare for catastrophic floods last year.
The fate of these programs remains uncertain. The Trump administration has essentially sought to shutter the agency. A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order. On the ground, much of the work has stopped.
“They were buying down future risk,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security and a former U.S. intelligence official. “Invest little today so we don’t have to spend a lot in the future when things metastasize.”
The German government this week released a report calling climate change “the greatest security threat of our day and age,” echoing a U.S. intelligence report from 2021, which described climate hazards as “threat multipliers.”
Some U.S.A.I.D. funding supported mediation programs to prevent local clashes over land or water. For instance, as the rains become erratic in the Sahel, clashes between farmers and cattle herders become more frequent.