On Wednesday night, President Trump declared that the U.S. would withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a significant global treaty that establishes a legal framework for international negotiations to tackle climate change.
This move follows the Trump Administration’s request to the State Department last February to review the country’s participation in various international organizations. As a result, the president has now pulled the United States out of a total of 66 international organizations, including 31 United Nations entities. Other groups include U.N. Oceans, the Intergovernmental Science – Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the International Renewable Energy Agency.
By doing so, the United States has become the first country to abandon the framework in which it played a crucial role in creating in the early 1990s . “It’s a terrible indication of the U.S.’s commitment to international climate action,” says Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director of international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Russia, Iran, Venezuela, countries that aren’t extremely strong climate leaders, are still part of the agreement. So the U.S. will be the only major outlier in the global international conference.”
Considering that the Trump Administration has already scaled back a number of climate initiatives, experts say that leaving the UNFCCC is unlikely to have a substantial impact.
“Over the past 11-plus months, the federal government has already done everything it can to slow down the energy transition and climate action,” says Max Holmes, president and CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
This move will put the U.S. further behind other countries that are seeking to capitalize on the growing clean energy movement.
“The U.S. is missing out on a huge economic opportunity,” says Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director of international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “With the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the investments that started flowing into the U.S. afterward, there were signs that the U.S. could be both a domestic player in the clean energy economy and also potentially export some of those efforts to the rest of the world and play a role in this growing clean energy market. Unfortunately, the actions of the Trump Administration will make it much more difficult to compete in this growing clean energy market.”
In a statement released on Thursday, Simon Stiell, UNFCCC executive secretary, said that the decision would only harm the United States in the long term.
“While all other nations are moving forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation, and science can only damage the U.S. economy, jobs, and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega – storms, and droughts rapidly worsen,” he said. “It will mean less affordable energy, food, transport, and insurance for American households and businesses, as renewables continue to get cheaper than fossil fuels, as climate – driven disasters hit American crops, businesses, and infrastructure harder each year, and as oil, coal, and gas volatility leads to more conflicts, regional instability, and forced migration.”
Stiell also said that “the doors remain open” for the U.S. to rejoin the treaty in the future.
The rest of the world doesn’t seem to be waiting around, Schmidt says, noting that the annual U.N. climate conference, named COP30 last year, continued without U.S. involvement. “We saw clear signs that the rest of the world is continuing to take action on climate change at home… I think that’s a sign that the rest of the world is a bit disappointed that the U.S. is sitting out, but it’s not halting its own action.”
Still, it doesn’t mean that climate action in the United States is over. Across the country, state and local governments have continued to push forward on climate action locally and represent the United States on the international stage, Holmes notes. “Just because the federal government tries to stop things doesn’t mean everything stops,” he says. “The U.S. government is by no means the only actor in this field.”