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US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that effectively withdraws the United States from 66 international organizations, including the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Law Commission, and the Global Counterterrorism Forum. The US will become the only country in the world not part of the IPCC or the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.However, while the president of the United States is allowed to join international treaties, it is unclear if they can withdraw from them. This means that Trump and the administration might face legal challenges regarding this executive order.
Under the claim that those international agencies “are contrary to the Interest of the United States,” the administration has also stepped out of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development, the Peacebuilding Commission, the UN Democracy Fund, and the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
“President Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the bedrock global treaty to tackle climate change is a new low and yet another a sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation,” Dr Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement.
The second Trump administration has been in power for less than one year, and from the first day in office, anti-science policies have been put in place through a range of controversial executive orders, such as the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, and the UN Human Rights Council.
The attacks on science intensified with the freezing of funds of governmental agencies, as well as the deep cuts to staff and funding from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and many national and international health organizations. The cuts to USAID alone are believed to have caused the deaths of 600,000 people, 400,000 of them children, according to experts.
This latest executive order comes at a pivotal moment in the global fight against the unfolding climate crisis and its attempt to build up resilience. According to non-profit Climate Central, climate and weather disasters have cost the United States $115 billion in 2025 alone, that's a $1 billion disaster every 10 days. In the last decade, over 190 separate $1 billion disasters have killed 6,500 people in the US.
“We will not continue expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimizing weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests. We reject inertia and ideology in favor of prudence and purpose. We seek cooperation where it serves our people and will stand firm where it does not,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
“Pulling out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is a strategic blunder that gives away American advantage for nothing in return. The 30-year-old agreement is the foundation of international climate cooperation. Walking away doesn’t just put America on the sidelines — it takes the US out of the arena entirely,” countered David Widawsky, Director of the World Resources Institute’s US program, in a statement seen by IFLScience.
“American communities and businesses will lose economic ground as other countries capture the jobs, wealth, and trade created by the booming clean-energy economy."
“Walking away doesn’t make the science disappear, it only leaves people across the United States, policymakers, and businesses flying in the dark at the very moment when credible climate information is most urgently needed,” added Dr Delta Merner, the associate accountability campaign director for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS.
“This is a clear attempt to weaken scientific guardrails that protect the public from disinformation, delay and reckless decision-making. Such a move will make it easier for fossil fuel interests to distort the facts while frontline communities pay the price.”
If these withdrawals are succesfful it may be difficult for a future president to rejoin treaties like the Paris Agreement, as that was organized under the auspices of the UNFCCC. Many of these exits may also not come into immediate effect. For example, the official US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation is set to come into effect on January 22, 2026, one year after the government ordered it.
