The analysis on this website has been completed by Campaign For Nature and Conservation International UK.
Nature is in crisis. Around the world, ecosystems are degraded, species are disappearing, and the natural systems that regulate our climate are under threat. International finance to protect and restore nature has never been more critical.
In 2021, ahead of hosting COP26 in Glasgow, the UK government made an ambitious commitment: £3 billion to protect and restore nature between 2021 and 2026, with £1.5 billion specifically for forests. This represented a step-change in the UK's climate finance ambitions.
But there was a problem: For the last five years no one could see where the money was going.
Despite nature finance being one of the most popular categories of UK aid spending with the British public, tracking how this money is spent has been nearly impossible. The UK government:
This lack of transparency makes it difficult to:
International Climate Finance (ICF) is the part of the UK government's aid budget that supports developing countries to respond to climate change. The UK first began providing ICF in 2011 as part of a collective commitment by developed nations to provide $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020, a goal that has since been increased to $300 billion per year by 2035.
The UK structures its climate finance in five-year cycles. In 2019, the UK committed to provide £11.6 billion in ICF between 2021 and 2026-known as 'ICF3' which ends in March 2026. The £3 billion nature pledge represents a landmark allocation within this broader commitment.
The UK International Nature Finance Tracker was created to fill this gap. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information requests covering 2021-2025, we provide the first comprehensive public analysis of UK nature finance spending since the commitment began.
Our goal is simple: to make UK international nature finance visible, understandable, and accountable.
This tracker covers UK international nature finance as a whole, with dedicated thematic breakdowns — starting with forests.
Dive into UK government international nature finance spending. Explore data from a broad nature perspective or drill into forest-specific programmes.
Track and analyse the full picture of UK government spending on international nature programmes, including forests. View departmental breakdowns, programme details, and year-on-year spending trends across biodiversity, ecosystems, forests, and conservation.
Explore Nature Data
Examine dedicated forest financing data, tracking UK government commitments to international forest programmes. Understand the scale and distribution of forest-related nature finance.
Explore Forest DataSpecific programme-level reporting of UK ICF flows is currently poor, and consistent public reporting of nature and forests flows on a project basis is non-existent.
Following the UK's exit from the EU, the UK has ceased to publish consolidated project-level information on its international climate finance flows on an annual basis, with the last EU-mandated reporting taking place in 2020 (for 2019 spend).
The UK now only reports its international climate finance flows on an itemised basis through the biannual UNFCCC reporting framework (undertaken with a two-year lag), meaning that the UK government does not currently intend to release official figures for UK ICF spend in 2023 and 2024 until late 2026, representing a substantial regression from prior established reporting practice.
To promote effective public and civil society engagement regarding the UK's international climate finance spending, greater transparency is essential. The following recommendations would bring UK ICF reporting in line with international best practices and enable proper scrutiny of how public funds are being used to address the climate and nature crisis.
What: The FCDO should be mandated to publish an itemised list of all UK ICF spend (including spend under the nature and forests ringfences) by calendar and financial year, within six months of the respective year close, in an accessible spreadsheet format (csv/xls).
Why: Timely, detailed reporting would enable meaningful oversight and allow civil society to engage constructively with UK climate finance programming while decisions are still relevant.
What: Include a column for ICF status within the project-level disclosure reported annually through the UK aid statistics reporting process.
Why: This simple addition would make it easy to track climate finance within the broader aid reporting framework that already exists.
What: Publish an itemised list of all the projects contributing to total current reported ICF results by year and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) value on an annual basis as part of the ICF results reporting process.
Why: The public deserves to know not just where money is going, but whether it's achieving its intended impact on nature protection and restoration.
This lack of transparency inhibits efforts to understand and improve UK aid for nature, and ensure it is oriented towards the most effective forms of grant financing for nature protection and restoration.
With nature and forests being one of the most popular categories of UK aid spending with the British public, citizens have a right to understand how their money is being spent.
Despite nature and forests being one of the most popular categories of UK aid spending with the British public, the lack of reporting over the last five years has resulted in an absence of political and public awareness of the need to renew the nature finance pledge for the next five years (2026-31) in April 2026.
As a result, UK international nature finance faces an imminent collapse after five years of growth. This type of boom-bust spending results in reduced project delivery and reduced value for money for the UK taxpayer.
We call on the UK Government to maintain a proportionate spend on international nature in ICF4 as in ICF3, despite a reduced budget scenario, and to commit to mandatory annual reporting in order to grow and maintain higher levels of political and public understanding and support for this vital segment of UK aid spending.