New Delhi: The US Wednesday announced it is exiting 66 international organisations, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the India-led International Solar Alliance (ISA), terming them “wasteful”, “unnecessary” and “anti-American”. The US is continuing to identify more organisations to exit in the near future.
“Today, President (Donald) Trump announced the US is leaving 66 anti-American, useless, or wasteful international organizations. Review of additional international organizations remains ongoing. These withdrawals keep a key promise President Trump made to Americans – we will stop subsidizing globalist bureaucrats who act against our interests. The Trump Administration will always put America and Americans first,” Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, said in a statement on X.
“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.”
Among the organisations the US has quit, a large number are linked to renewable energy or climate change. One of these is the UNFCCC and the US becomes the first and only country to pull out of the landmark 1992 agreement that identifies basic principles to deal with climate change. The “bedrock” agreement on dealing with climate change is the parent pact that led to the Paris deal at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015 to reduce carbon emissions.
The US has also pulled out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), UN Water, UN Energy and the International Energy Forum (IEF), among others.
The nation has further decided to exit from the Colombo Plan Council, founded in 1951 to promote cooperation between emerging economies. The council still maintains membership of 28 countries, including India, Chile, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, apart from Sri Lanka itself.
The ISA, founded by India and France in 2015, was joined by the US in 2021 on the margins of the UN Climate Change Conference held at Glasgow. Then Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry had supported the signing of the framework agreement for the ISA and credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking the “lead” in the establishment of the alliance.
“We worked out the details and this is a process we are pleased to be a part of. This will be an important contribution to more rapid deployment of solar globally. It will be particularly important for developing countries,” Kerry had said as the US became the 101st member of the ISA.
The ISA, whose framework agreement was circulated among interested parties in 2016, has since established itself as an inter-governmental treaty-based organisation focusing on the reduction of the cost of financing and technology for solar adaptation.
At the end of last year, the organisation had more than 120 signatories, including all major economies except Russia and China. India has welcomed any participation by Beijing, which is the world’s largest solar power market. The ISA secretariat is located in India.
The organisation has developed various strategies to aid in the adaptation of solar energy, including risk financing apart from focusing on capacity-building in emerging economies, especially in Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
“As this list begins to demonstrate, what started as a pragmatic framework of international organizations for peace and cooperation has morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests,” Rubio stated, on the organisations the US is departing.
“We will not continue expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimizing weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests. We reject inertia and ideology in favor of prudence and purpose. We seek cooperation where it serves our people and will stand firm where it does not.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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