Major UK-funded climate project in Bangladesh forced to close over aid cuts

A UK-funded climate project in Bangladesh is being forced to close two years early after foreign aid cuts, leaving thousands of vulnerable people without support and threatening to undo work that has already been carried out, The Independent has learnt.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is in the middle of a programme of cuts to the foreign aid budget, which is set to see the UK aid budget fall from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income. With a number of developing countries seeing their UK aid relationships all-but eliminated, the cuts have been labelled a “moral catastrophe”, with many observers particularly dismayed at the decision to cut UK aid for climate projects.

One organisation impacted is British development charity Practical Action. Since 2023, the charity has been managing part of a major development project in Bangladesh, which is aiming to transform the lives of tens of thousands of people through interventions including solar power systems, climate-resilient agriculture and aquaculture feedstocks and technologies, and weather information systems that can provide early warnings for extreme rainfall and cyclones.

Situated in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans – the world’s largest tidal mangrove forest, much of which is UNESCO World Heritage Site – Practical Action’s project launched in 2023, and was expected to run until 2028.

In April 2026, however, the charity was told it would have to end its project in June of this year, according to Tamanna Rahma, climate resilience lead for Practical Action Bangladesh. That deadline was later extended to September, after intense lobbying from the charity, she says.

Practical Action was supposed to have received £2.2m by 2026, but ended up receiving “far less than this”, says Rahma. The project was supposed to reach 57,000 people by the end of this year, but will in the end only reach 37,000 people.

“This abrupt cut has threatened our reputation in the community, which we have carefully built up over the past two and a half years,” Rahma says. “It has also impacted the long-term stability of the interventions that we have made, and limited our ability to plan for an effective exit.”

The cut to Practical Action’s project forms a fraction of overall cuts to the UK-Bangladesh bilateral aid programme, which, it was revealed in July, is set to fall in value from £66.7 million to £31m between 2025/6 and 2026/7.

The early exit has also been damaging due to the fact that the target communities need as much support as possible to adapt to the climate crisis, Rahma adds.

“Every year we are seeing more severe storms and cyclones, while the sea is rising and soil is becoming salinated,” she says. “There is huge demand for financing such as this, yet the ability to make these kinds of tangible programmatic interventions is declining.”

Commenting in response to Practical Action’s concerns, Labour MP and chair of the International Development Committee Sarah Champion said: “If projects such as this are being ended two years early with short notice, it begs serious questions about the UK's commitment to supporting low-income countries as they respond to climate change.

“What’s more, this kind of action is likely to represent poor value for money for the UK taxpayer and damage the UK’s reputation as a reliable partner in the response to climate change.”

Situated on the Ganges Delta - where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers converge before flowing into the Bay of Bengal - the Sundarbans is a vast 10,277km² mangrove forest. It is home to 42 mammal species, including endangered tigers and river dolphins, as well as nearly 300 species of birds.

The communities supported by Practical Action live on the fringes of this unique ecological area, and have traditionally depended on the forest for products including fish, firewood and honey. Many now also farm, but widespread illiteracy and their isolation from the wider Bangladeshi economy leave them among the country’s most marginalised communities.

Many also continue to suffer the after-effects of Cyclone Aila, which affected an estimated 100,000 people when it hit the Sundarbans in 2009, destroying local infrastructure and completely changing the landscape in parts.

The Sundarbans also faces a sea level rise of roughly 3cm per year - around double the global average - with the rapid rising displacing communities and ruining once-fertile soil.

Bina Mondal recalls how her village, Kalabogi, once had wide roads, productive farms, and fruit trees. After Cyclone Aila, roads and embankments washed away, and fishing is now the only viable source of income for the family.

Fresh water is now hard to come by except through rainwater harvesting, while smaller and smaller catches from the delta mean the family’s income becomes ever-more stretched. The family often cooks only one meal per day, and healthcare is currently out of reach.

A small solar panel provided by Practical Action has provided massive support as she struggles to make ends meet. “I can continue working after dark, and this has helped me earn more,” she says. “Before the project started, we were earning around 2,000 to 3,000 taka (£12-18 per month) from fishing, but this year we are earning around 4,000 to 5,000 taka.”

Another villager supported by Practical Action over the past two and a half years is Bashonti Mondal, who received a new solar-powered rice-husking machine. Previously, she says, she travelled from farm to farm each day looking for work from local landowners. Now, she can earn a higher income from home, while having more time to support her children.

Aid workers at the charity report how, when the early closure of the project was announced, some members of communities cried, while other people were confused as to why support was ending just as interventions were beginning to bear fruit.

Interventions that will essentially go to waste include a scheme to support a pool of 140 entrepreneurs, who have been given 50,000 taka each, and have received initial project coaching. Leaving them now will bring them back to “ground zero”, however, as they have been provided with a “bare minimum understanding of markets”, says Practical Action’s Rahma.

“Having two to three months' notice to wrap things up when it was very clear that the project was to continue until December 2028 has been very difficult,” says Rahma. “Practical always has a proper exit plan that involves community coaching and a hand-over of interventions to the local government - but this time we have not been able to fully do this.”

Rahma is clear-sighted that – in a country of 170m people – it is unrealistic to expect grants from foreign governments to lift everyone in need out of poverty. The current shift by donor countries like the UK to drive in capital through new kinds of partnerships with private investors is understandable in that sense, she says.

“At the same time, when we are talking about the most marginalised and vulnerable here in Bangladesh, it is very hard to see how private capital can come,” says Rahma. “People do not have any significant monetary income to speak of, and transportation and infrastructure remains virtually non-existent due to Cyclone Aila, which took place as long ago as 2009.”

Rahma’s concerns have been echoed by other NGOs. Last year, for example, the NGO Mercy Corps warned that only three per cent of adaptation finance needs in developing countries have so far been met by the private sector, with interventions like flood defences typically considered a “public good” that require government money to be built.

Romily Greenhill, CEO of UK development charity network Bond, commented: "The cancellation of UK-funded humanitarian and climate adaptation programmes lays bare the harsh reality of Labour's short-sighted UK aid cuts, and represents a lifeline lost to communities already suffering the worst impacts of conflict, poverty and climate crisis worldwide.”

She added that the new Labour leadership of prime minister Andy Burnham and foreign secretary Ed Miliband have an opportunity to “change course” and restore the country’s “shattered reputation on international development”.

“We urge the new prime minister and foreign secretary to definitively rule out further cuts to the UK aid budget, set out a roadmap for returning UK aid to 0.7 per cent of GNI, and ensure that high-quality international climate finance is protected,” she said.

Rahma suggests that signals from FCDO in its new development strategy show that there is a desire to move away from giving money to NGOs like Practical Action, to provide more support directly to the governments of developing countries. “But I have concerns here, as the government has not traditionally had the manpower, the capacity, and skills to access hard-to-reach communities like those living in the forests of the Sundarbans,” she says.

Practical Action has been looking to find grant-funding from foundations to fill the gap left by FCDO, however, the short notice on the closure of the project has hindered such efforts.

“As Practical Action, we do not wish to talk negatively about FCDO, and we continue to work with them across Asia, Africa and Latin America,” says Rahma. “We continue to need sustainable, long-term grant finance to be able to reach the most vulnerable communities who we are trying to support.”

In response to concerns raised in this article, an FCDO spokesperson said: "Climate is an urgent national security threat, and the Foreign Secretary will be bringing his international leadership on this topic to FCDO.

“We are transitioning away from spending high levels of grant ODA [Official development assistance], but our ambition and effort will remain high - our bilateral programmes will focus on partnerships with governments to strengthen systems, leverage finance and move away from reliance on aid.”

This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project