US President Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from a foundational climate treaty and the lead body for assessing global warming as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced on Wednesday.
A total of 66 international organizations – consisting of “35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities” – were named in a White House memorandum as being “contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”
The most notable of these is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty that underpins all major international climate agreements.
Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, openly disparaged the scientific consensus that human activities are warming the planet and derided climate science as a “hoax” at the UN high-level summit last September.
The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved by the US Senate later that year during the presidency of George HW Bush.
The U.S. Constitution allows presidents to enter into treaties “provided the consent of two-thirds of the Senators present” but does not say anything about the process for withdrawing from them – a legal ambiguity that could lead to challenges.
Leaving the underlying treaty could introduce additional legal uncertainty surrounding any future U.S. attempts to rejoin.
Speak before the General Meeting in SeptemberTrump delivered a scathing attack on the world organization founded in 1945 to promote global peace and cooperation in the aftermath of World War II.
“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked in a wide-ranging speech, whose litany of complaints even extended to a broken escalator and teleprompter at UN headquarters in New York.
UNFCCC exit ‘a whole order of magnitude different’
“President Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the foundational global treaty to tackle climate change is a new low and yet another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation,” Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told AFP.
Jean Su, a senior lawyer at the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP: “Withdrawing from the UNFCCC is a whole order of magnitude different from withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.”
“We believe it is illegal for the president to unilaterally withdraw from a treaty that required a two-thirds vote in the Senate,” she continued. “We are looking at legal options to continue that argument.”
“The United States would be the first country to withdraw from the UNFCCC,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“Every other nation is a member, in part because they recognize that even beyond the moral imperative to address climate change, having a seat at the table in these negotiations represents the ability to shape large-scale economic policies and opportunities,” Bapna said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, an outspoken critic of Trump who is widely seen as a presidential candidate, said in a statement: “Our mindless president is surrendering American leadership on the world stage and weakening our ability to compete in the economy of the future – creating a leadership vacuum that China is already exploiting.”
Organizations that “want to limit American sovereignty,” Rubio claims
The memo also orders the US to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, along with other climate-related organizations including the International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Oceans and UN Water.
As during his first term, Trump has also withdrawn the US from UNESCO – the UN educational, scientific and cultural organization – which the country had rejoined under Biden.
Trump has also withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization and sharply reduced foreign aid, cutting funding to numerous UN agencies and forcing them to scale back their operations on the ground, including the High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program.
Other prominent agencies mentioned in the memo include the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which works on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which focuses on trade, investment and development.
“For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or financing of those entities to the extent permitted by law,” the memo reads. Trump has already largely cut voluntary funding for most UN agencies.
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayers’ funding and involvement with entities that put globalist agendas above American priorities, or address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively so that American taxpayer dollars are best allocated in other ways to support relevant missions,” the White House statement said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the organizations were driven by “progressive ideology” and actively sought to “limit US sovereignty”.
“From DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] Mandates for ‘gender equality’ campaigns for climate orthodoxy now serve many international organizations as a global project,” he said in a statement.
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