Environmental organizations globally expressed increased difficulties in donor and stakeholder coordination following U.S. aid cuts. This has led them to abandon complex cross-border initiatives, and feel the collective voice used to drive policy reform weakened.Multiple local environmental organizations in Peru pivoted toward becoming revenue-generating social enterprises or tapping into investments in the aftermath of U.S. aid cuts. They noted an accelerated push toward private-sector diversification, leaning on carbon markets to build alternative sustainable revenue streams driven by corporate demand for credits.
Date: 6/26
Region: Global
Country: Global
Topic: Climate & Environment
Policy Lens: Climate & Resource Pressure
Entry Type: Secondary Effect
Additional Context: This information is based on 150 semi-structured interviews conducted by One Earth Partners across five countries selected to represent the diversity of USAID's environmental work. Interview findings were triangulated with a global survey of 175 respondents and external media analysis.
As described by One Earth Partners, an example can be seen in Latin America, where a major regional initiative successfully brought together environmental prosecutors and financial intelligence units across six countries (including Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil) to collaborate on joint cases. This network allowed these nations to share intelligence and align strategies to combat transnational threats, such as the shark fin trade, illegal gold mining, and the overlap between illicit crops and environmental crimes in border areas. A host country had formally committed to chairing this new regional wildlife enforcement network based on promised U.S. technical support. When the funding was abruptly pulled, the implementing partners had no other regional resources to cover such a massive geographic scope, causing the cross-border assistance and the entire collaborative network to collapse.
Source: One Earth Partners (Full report forthcoming).