Trump to pull US out of UN climate convention and climate science body

Under the Trump administration, the US – the world’s second-largest emitter – will become the first country to withdraw from the UN climate convention, a key bedrock for international climate diplomacy, in a move the UN climate chief said would leave Americans poorer and less secure.

President Donald Trump’s White House said the US would quit 31 UN bodies, among them the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It will also leave 35 other international organisations – many of them environmental – including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global voice on climate science, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the world’s largest climate fund.

While the Trump administration already gave notice nearly a year ago that the US would quit the Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, it did not at that time attempt to leave the UNFCCC. The climate convention, adopted in 1992, is the cornerstone of global efforts to curb climate change and tackle its impacts.

The US has already ceased funding to the UNFCCC, and would be the only nation to formally exit the convention. After officially notifying the UN, the withdrawal will take effect after a year.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the step “a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous”, but added that the US could re-enter the convention in the future.  

“While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse,” Stiell said in a statement.

The Trump administration has also decided to exit key organisations for nature conservation, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which publishes a “red list” of endangered species, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the scientific advisory body to the UN biodiversity convention.

In addition, the US will leave the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and REN21, all of which promote renewable energy.

“We will stop subsidizing globalist bureaucrats who act against our interests,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, adding membership of other international organisations was also under review.

“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” Rubio added in a statement.

The US Department of the Treasury confirmed it has notified the GCF that the country is withdrawing from the fund and stepping down from its board seat “effective immediately”.

IRENA and REN21, a global network of governments, businesses and academics, said they regretted the US withdrawal but remained open to re-engaging with Washington.

“Renewables are essential in today’s uncertain environment to ensure energy security and strengthen geopolitical position,” IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera said.

Rejoining possible

The US Senate ratified the UNFCCC in 1992, which experts said raised questions about the legality of Trump’s move to exit through an executive order.

But legal scholars indicated that the Senate would not need to ratify the UN climate convention again if the country wanted to rejoin.

Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote that, based on the Senate’s original “advice and consent”, the US could once again become a party to the UNFCCC 90 days after such a decision were formalised.  

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Sue Biniaz, the US State Department’s former principal deputy special envoy for climate until January 2025, said she hoped the federal retreat would be “a temporary one”.

“There are multiple future pathways to rejoining the key climate agreements,” she said.

Forfeiting influence

Policy experts said global climate action would forge onwards despite the US move, but some cautioned that it could complicate international negotiations.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called the decision “regrettable and unfortunate”, adding that the European Commission will continue to support international climate research, work on multilateral climate cooperation and pursue “our agenda of climate action, competitiveness and independence”.

COP30 CEO Ana Toni said the world’s low carbon transition is “irreversible” and that the COP presidency will continue engaging with American subnational actors, the private sector, and civil society. She said she hopes the US government will rejoin the UNFCCC “in a near future”.

Gina McCarthy, the first White House National Climate Advisor under Joe Biden who now chairs “America Is All In”, a coalition of US cities, states and businesses and institutions working on climate action, called it “a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision”.

As a result, she said the US would forfeit influence over “trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country”.

The NRDC’s Schmidt said, however, that the US absence would “complicate the climate negotiations, as a major economy pulling in the wrong direction always makes forging global progress more difficult”.

Former US climate envoy John Kerry said Trump’s decision was “a gift to China and a get-out-of-jail-free card to countries and polluters who want to avoid responsibility”. He added that “the price is always paid by kids, in lost health, squandered jobs, rising costs, uninsurable infrastructure, and worse consequences.”

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Delta Merner, associate accountability campaign director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Trump was “deliberately cutting our nation’s formal participation off from the world’s most trusted source of climate science”.

While individual US scientists can still contribute, the country will “no longer be able to help guide the scientific assessments that governments around the world rely on”, she added in a statement.

This article was updated after publication with additional comments from the UN climate chief Simon Stiell, the European climate commissioner, COP30 CEO Ana Toni, IRENA and REN21.

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