Trump administration’s declared aim is to eliminate U.S. foreign aid agency.

A USAID water project in Ethiopia, in 2017. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – February 4, 2025

The attempt by President Donald Trump and his aide, Elon Musk, to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, a global leader in humanitarian assistance, is short-sighted and will do long-term harm to millions of people who benefit from its programs, and to America’s security and standing in the world, say water and climate experts.

Critics of the administration’s moves point to USAID’s work to expand access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene, known collectively as WASH. They note that U.S. foreign aid and the domestic partnerships it facilitates can be a remedy for household instability that stems from a lack of water, and that pulling back from that duty is surrendering global leadership and influence.

“Water insecurity makes people desperate, and desperate people do desperate things,” said John Oldfield, CEO of the consulting firm Accelerate Global and a 20-plus year veteran of international WASH policy. “So we’re opening up a door through our potential lack of attention on WASH and water security to violent extremist organizations, to China, to Russia, to other groups with different types of strings attached.”

President Trump has a very different view. Foreign aid, Trump said in the January 20 executive order, is “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”

USAID’s web site was still dark on Tuesday afternoon, days after the aid agency was targeted by the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and two weeks after a Trump executive order to freeze foreign aid and international climate spending. Globalwaters.org, which hosted the agency’s water, sanitation, and hygiene work, has also been taken down. Agency staff were barred from their offices and senior leaders were put on leave.

The dismantling of USAID and other government agencies, telegraphed in President Trump’s campaign speeches, represents a turning inward and a rejection of the global leadership role the U.S. has held since the end of the Second World War. That role enabled the U.S. to shape international financial and governance institutions like the United Nations and World Bank.

The targeting of USAID, which was established during the Kennedy administration, is part of President Trump’s broader “America First” strategy that formalizes the ascendance of previously fringe beliefs that the country should disengage internationally. Trump signed executive orders in his first week that paused most foreign aid for 90 days, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and World Health Organization, and suspended spending on climate resilience abroad.

Water policy and national security experts assert the president’s actions are dangerous. The National Threat Assessment, an annual report from the nation’s intelligence agencies, consistently emphasizes that climate change is resulting in food and water shortages that increase the risk of local and regional conflict and cross-border migration, particularly in the Middle East, Central America, and the Sahel. Threat assessments published during the first Trump administration also stated this.

Water investments abroad do align with America’s long-term national interest, according to Oldfield.

“If we pull out of WASH investments and water security investments, that takes away the opportunity that the U.S. government has to prevent bad things from happening,” Oldfield said. “We’ll be limited to responding. We’ll be limited to just stopping the bleeding, to just putting out fires rather than building the resilience of these families, communities, and countries, rather than strengthening their capacity to solve their own problems.”

Water, sanitation, and hygiene spending accounts for a small but consequential piece of the $40 billion USAID budget. In fiscal year 2023, the agency spent nearly $1.2 billion on water-related programs. The bulk of it is divided between disaster aid ($665 million) and water, sanitation, and hygiene ($475 million). The WASH work is funded through the Water for the World Act of 2014 and targets high-priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Other public and private partners contributed an additional $848 million.

“Our strong emphasis on private-sector engagement reflects our commitment to partnerships, recognizing that no single actor – whether it be a bilateral donor, a multilateral development bank, the private sector, or domestic resources – can bridge the $1 trillion global financing gap needed to achieve global water security,” Nancy Eslick, USAID global water coordinator, said in a recent interview with Smart Water Magazine.

Facilitating these sorts of public-private relationships is the purpose of the U.S. Water Partnership, which works with federal agencies but does receive direct funding from them for operations.

“International cooperation is essential in solving climate and our whole range of environmental problems,” said Chris Rich, executive director of the U.S. Water Partnership, who was speaking in a personal capacity. “So the idea that we can just stop funding and we’re going to close our borders off and build a wall – that does not work for environmental issues. It doesn’t work for climate, doesn’t work for water, and it’s just the wrong way to go about it.”

USAID’s expansive portfolio of programs extends beyond water, sanitation, and hygiene. From the Mekong and Himalayas to the Amazon, the agency and its grantees monitor ecosystem health, boost agricultural productivity, build resilience to a changing climate, and manage watersheds.

The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, a Nepal-based NGO that works on water and climate challenges across the Himalayan region, receives USAID funding to oversee a program that provides satellite and remote sensing data to help manage their environment. SERVIR, as the program is known, monitors biodiversity, drought, air quality, floods, and forests.

Annie Dare, head of communications for ICIMOD, said the organization is “reviewing the impact” of the funding freeze to see what adjustments will be needed for its operations.