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Mott MacDonald is closing its international development arm, ending bids and winding down projects. A shift in corporate culture is partly to blame — but so are shrinking aid budgets and a lack of confidence in the sector’s future.
Also in today’s edition: Climate goals are way off track, and philanthropy heavyweights talk turkey with Devex.
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Cheerio, old chaps
It’s not just the U.S. axing foreign aid. The U.K. has taken a hatchet to it as well, and the financial repercussions of that are becoming apparent.
Mott MacDonald, one of the U.K.’s top aid contractors, is shuttering its international development arm, halting all new bids and winding down current projects, according to multiple current and former staff.
The decision, according to several sources, has kick-started a termination process for all 500 staff in the unit worldwide, Devex contributing reporter Susannah Birkwood writes. Staff say the closure reflects not only shrinking aid budgets but also a shift in corporate risk appetite under new leadership appointed in 2025, and a lack of confidence in the future of large-scale contracting from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
“They used the cuts to make a decision they already wanted to make,” a former employee who did not wish to be identified tells Devex, adding that the unit’s margins had been “pretty low for some time.”
Read: Mott MacDonald shuts international development arm amid UK aid turmoil (Pro)
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Big gap, little action
Halfway through what’s been called the “decisive decade” for climate action, the outlook is bleak. A World Resources Institute report finds backsliding on nearly every front: EV sales stalling; coal and deforestation untouched; agriculture emissions rising; and public finance for fossil fuels increasing. Out of 45 indicators, not one is on track.
“The 1.5 degree limit is in jeopardy,” says Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of WRI. “Before Paris, the world was headed toward a 4 degrees Celsius-plus future. … If we implemented [current promises], we’d be near a 1.8- or 1.9-degree world. This implementation gap is something we all need to focus on.”
Developing economies need up to $2.5 trillion a year in climate finance by 2030, but only $1.9 trillion was mobilized in 2023. Private finance has surged, but public finance and multilateral banks remain far off pace.
Yet progress glimmers, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz writes. Clean energy investment hit $2 trillion in 2024, renewables now supply 40% of global electricity, and China alone has installed more than a terawatt of solar power. And while the U.S. has stepped back from leadership on climate, many are looking to China — still the world’s biggest emitter — to lead the green energy transition and invest in the global south’s climate goals.
Read: 45 climate goals, 0 on track — the Earth’s failing report card
Knock knock! Who’s there?
There has been a slowdown in vaccination worldwide in recent years, driven by increased migration and climate disruption that make it harder to keep track of people and keep to immunization schedules. But India has cut zero-dose children from 1.6 million in 2023 to 900,000 in 2024, using a plan rolled out last year.
Still, challenges remain, Devex contributor Cheena Kapoor writes. “Inaccurate due lists miss children born outside hospitals … and mobile families often vanish once they change address,” says Dr. Rakesh Parashar, a health policy expert.
But in Madhya Pradesh, volunteer health influencer Samoti Barman proudly says that three villages she oversees no longer have zero-dose children — except for those who migrate seasonally with their families. To fill the gaps, local NGO Transform Rural India is training “change vectors” to do community care, including going door-to-door to make sure children aren’t missed.
Read: India’s fight to reach the children vaccine campaigns still miss
Related: How Gavi is reaching ‘zero-dose’ children in conflict areas (Pro)
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Families on the brink
In Afghanistan’s river valleys, families are in freefall. Children pile into trucks to hunt for work, parents barter scraps, and hunger drives desperate choices.
The economic shock is severe: Aid once made up 40% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. “We’ve been turning away 9 out of 10 of the acutely hungry,” says John Aylieff, World Food Programme’s country director in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid cuts — especially those by the U.S. — have hit hardest. WFP’s budget plunged 40%, from $9.8 billion in 2024 to $6.4 billion this year.
The fallout is everywhere, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes. WFP shut nearly 300 nutrition sites; the International Rescue Committee cut 10 feeding programs; and Save the Children closed 21 mobile health clinics. Globally, WFP warns 13.7 million people could slip from “crisis” to “emergency” levels of hunger.
Yet U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted “no one has died” from the cuts and “no children are dying on my watch.” However, a Lancet study found dismantling USAID could cause 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
“When we have to close our programs, our therapeutic feeding programs, there’s no one there to count the children who are being deprived of treatment and dying,” says Jeanette Bailey of IRC.
Read: ‘We’re turning away 9 out of 10 hungry people’ — the cost of shrinking aid
Big risks, bigger payoffs
As old growth models falter, the Gates Foundation and Open Philanthropy are testing new ways to help low- and middle-income countries prosper. Unlike government donors, philanthropy can take risks, experiment, and push policy reform.
A year into its new economic growth strategy, Open Philanthropy is placing big bets, Devex Senior Editor Catherine Cheney writes. “That’s a really hard thing to pull off, and we don’t think we come with any special sauce,” said Open Philanthropy’s Justin Sandefur during a Devex Impact House session on the sidelines of last week’s World Bank-IMF annual meetings. “But … that conversation about how other countries could achieve that kind of growth acceleration feels like the biggest conversation in development to us.”
Sandefur joined Megan O’Donnell, senior program officer at the Gates Foundation, who argued philanthropy can bridge “micro” interventions and “macro” policy. “We now need to get creative and innovative and think a bit outside the box,” she said.
Open Philanthropy’s first step is a $40 million partnership with the Livelihood Impact Fund. It’s a shift from bed nets and vitamin A supplements toward a cause that is more difficult to measure or attribute. But it is consistent with an approach the funder calls “hits-based” giving. “We do that by looking for things that we think are going to be kind of mega transformational hits, and expecting that our portfolio is going to include a lot of zeros,” Sandefur said.
Both he and O’Donnell acknowledged the sector’s limits: “We don’t want to pretend we matter too much,” Sandefur admitted. Still, philanthropy can move where others won’t. This week, for example, O’Donnell is in Kenya for meetings on how to make visible the unpaid work, especially care work, that traditional growth metrics overlook. When GDP was first developed, she noted, unpaid domestic work was excluded because it was considered too difficult to measure.
“None of those excuses are true anymore,” she said.
Read: As aid shrinks, top philanthropies test new ways to spur economic growth
In other news
Nearly 90% of satellite-detected methane leaks from oil and gas operations go unaddressed, undercutting the goal to reduce emissions 30% by 2030, a U.N. report warns. [Reuters]
The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to allow UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies to deliver aid into Gaza, ruling that the blockade breached Israel’s international obligations. [BBC]
A dozen U.N. international staff have been released from the Houthis-detained compound in Sanaa, Yemen, though other colleagues remain held as the U.N. presses for safe return and unrestricted humanitarian access. [The Washington Post]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
