Low-lying countries and territories in the Indian and Pacific oceans are among the most vulnerable places in the world to the threats of climate change.

To mitigate those threats, U.S. agencies provided $1.9 billion to parts of the vast region between fiscal years 2017 and 2023. The funding went to a range of activities related to solar energy, reforestation, hazard reduction, coral reef and mangrove health.

But the Department of State and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency do not track data on award amounts by location because the activities are not budgeted for a specific country. A Government Accountability Office report released last month concludes that needs to change.

“By having data that is more precise and readily available, agency officials and policymakers would be better able to ensure the accountability of U.S. funding and make informed decisions about future resource needs,” according to the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Project.

The report’s release comes as rising seas, coral bleaching, drought and more frequent natural disasters are growing in severity, especially for countries and U.S. territories in the Indo-Pacific. It’s estimated that 70% of natural disasters occur in the region.

Many of the areas have close ties to Hawaiʻi, including the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, which have seen tens of thousands of their residents migrate to the U.S. in part because of climate change.

The $1.9 billion also went to the U.S. territories of American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. Bangladesh and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean also received aid.

The report makes no mention of the Biden administration’s policies toward climate change and immigration, which have been hailed by environmental advocates, nor the fact that the incoming Trump administration already has pledged to reverse many of those policies because the president-elect says climate change is a hoax.

But the project report warns that mitigating climate change is essential to U.S. security and welfare.

“According to the United Nations, more than 50,000 people every year in the Pacific region are forced to flee their homes due to the devastating impacts of disasters and climate change,” the report says. “Some of these countries are among the world’s most disaster-prone and bear the greatest risk of population displacement.”

The Government Accountability Project’s report also singles out one Pacific nation for U.S. concern: China. It cites a 2022 National Security Strategy analysis that said China has ambitions “to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power.”

Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands recently renewed Compacts of Free Association with the United States to receive economic assistance in exchange for providing the U.S. with exclusive military use rights in their countries.

Reduced Food Security

The effects of climate change vary across the Indo-Pacific. But negative impacts include reduced food and economic security due to damaged infrastructure, decline in fresh water, altered crop production and disruption of fisheries, the Government Accountability Project said.

These same countries and territories, unlike the U.S., China and India, are not responsible for major contributions to global warming. But they are “among the most affected and the least able to respond to such threats,” according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

The threats are particularly pronounced in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, where most people and infrastructure are in coastal zones “with no option for moving to a higher elevation,” it said.

The report was requested by the U.S. Congress. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 also required the agency to support oversight of funds appropriated from the IRA, “including ensuring the impacts of funding decisions are equitable.”

Latesha Love-Grayer, the director of GAO’s International Affairs and Trade mission team, explained in the report that it is one of the first to identify how much funding the U.S. has provided, because there is no centralized repository for the information.

The four main federal agencies allocating resources in the Indo-Pacific are the departments of the Interior and State, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

While the agencies generally followed best practices for evidenced-based policymaking and performance management for 17 project areas identified by the Government Accountability Project, the report found inconsistencies when it came to identifying ways to address internal and external factors that could affect overall success.

Agencies have since identified and taken steps to address some of those inconsistencies. They include leveraging interagency resource and recruiting more people with needed skills and expertise.

One critical area to work on is improving technical assistance in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Government Accountability Project notes how Department of Agriculture officials said unreliable internet services on the islands “make it difficult to download large spatial data sets” and to use computing models to predict and obtain real-time climate data.

Interior officials said data limitations “severely hinder” the ability of territories to be included in funding decisions.

And government officials from Papua New Guinea suggested weather stations and other physical resources would bolster U.S. technical assistance.

Other Pacific countries examined by the Government Accountability Project were Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Many have been identified by the U.N. as facing unique social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities.

U.S. assistance aimed at helping them includes $1.2 million for a renewable energy initiative involving PV solar and battery storage systems on Aunu’u Island in American Samoa and $1.3 million for Environmental Protection Agency support in Palau and other areas as part of the Partnership for Resilient Infrastructure Investment.

USAID also spent $16 million to help Papua New Guinea improve forest governance, increase the environmental sustainability of forest industry and protect land and resource rights of communities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by The Healy Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.