Opinion: If the US is serious about climate change, USAID should be too

Since coming to power, U.S. President Joe Biden has identified climate change as one of the core priorities for his administration. The president announced during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, in Glasgow that the U.S. aims to cut carbon pollution in half by 2030 and through his executive order from late last year that federal operations will reach net-zero by 2050. Yet one international sector remains well behind on such climate transparency and commitment — that of global development.

The recently released report from Working Group II’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that development agencies around the world have a “rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate resilient development.”

While the U.S. Agency for International Development has committed to operational carbon neutrality, and this is a commendable step, operational neutrality — think USAID’s travel and buildings’ carbon footprint — is a small part of its activities and budget. USAID, by failing to include a commitment to carbon neutrality in its programming, has missed an opportunity to seize the moment and mirror the Biden administration’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

There is a good reason for USAID to measure and balance the impacts of its development investments with regard to climate impact. Climate change fundamentally threatens USAID’s development and humanitarian activities by exacerbating the very problems the agency wishes to mitigate: Floods, droughts, and pollution render projects ineffective or worsen living conditions for the world’s poorest inhabitants.

Climate change is a risk multiplier. It undercuts food security and worsens humanitarian response, or creates the insecurity and instability that causes them, within and among countries. Climate change and deforestation (a critical driver of climate change and biodiversity loss) have directly undermined global health efforts, including serving as a leading cause of past, present, and future pandemics.

Moreover, USAID represents the best of American commitment to global prosperity for all. It provides a counterweight to Chinese approaches to development, such as its “Belt and Road initiative,” which have undermined China’s own commitments on climate, and may be a way to serve as export markets for Chinese carbon polluting products, including steel and coal.

USAID committing to become the first carbon neutral development agency would serve as a forcing agent for other agencies, both bilateral and multilateral, to follow suit.

What does carbon neutrality for operations mean? 

It means generating a net impact of zero emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. What this translates to for the agency is that USAID’s total portfolio of programming and operations, on average — from food security to humanitarian response, to global health — absorb the same amount or greater of emissions as it produces.

For instance, if USAID is investing in road infrastructure that inadvertently leads to deforestation, then it must balance that with investments in protection of forests, transforming the energy system, or improvements in food waste. Increased transparency into these decisions is how we may avoid undercutting our own policies and more importantly, the very people, wildlife, and wild lands that we seek to protect.

There is already significant justification for climate neutrality. USAID already is required by multiple executive orders, federal regulations, and internal policies and strategies to assess the environmental impact of its programs on foreign nations, including screening projects for climate risks.

Yet many exemptions from these policies exist. In fact, the agency specifically chooses to not assess quantitative impacts of climate because doing so is too hard. But under USAID’s last chief scientist, a working group was created that worked on how to operationalize this strategy.

Moreover, other organizations do such calculations all the time. In fact, in late March 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a new rule requiring U.S. companies to disclose their emissions as a measure of climate risk. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And just as USAID measures its development impact, it can and should measure its carbon impact as well.

A climate neutrality road map

To achieve climate neutrality, USAID will need to innovate. It could also play with the concepts of creating an internal carbon market, which would include the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense, and elevate its work in science, technology, and innovation for more sustainable and climate resilient development programming.

USAID must also be willing to update its data systems, something that the agency has been notoriously deficient at. It should inventory all USAID program activities that affect carbon emissions and calculate its carbon footprint on an annual basis, in a public report to the president. Finally, the agency must do more to identify win-win solutions in development programming that are also truly sustainable for climate and biodiversity.

By appointing Samantha Power as the agency’s head, Biden elevated the agency and its role in the world. Climate neutrality is an opportunity to continue to do so, to make USAID better at everything the agency does.

This endeavor is ultimately about increasing the agency's capacity to achieve its development goals. As the IPCC report clearly states, climate neutrality is a good development policy.