USAID environmental funding worth $70 mln frozen in Colombia, minister says

Adds figures on total U.S. funding for Colombia paragraphs 5-7 onward

By Oliver Griffin

BOGOTA, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Funding worth $70 million for environment and conservation projects from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been frozen in Colombia after President Donald Trump moved to gut the organization, the Andean country's environment minister said on Thursday.

"The main impact will be in the Amazon," Colombia's Environment Minister Susana Muhamad told journalists in Bogota. Colombia loses hundreds of square kilometers of forest to deforestation each year, mostly in the country's Amazon region.

Trump on Tuesday called USAID "incompetent and corrupt," as he tasked billionaire Elon Musk with scaling down the agency, which had more than 10,000 staff at home and overseas before all but just over 600 were put on leave or fired.

A little under half of the funding was for USAID's Amazonia Mia program, a spokesperson for the environment ministry said, adding that the rest went to other projects, without specifying which.

The proposed USAID budget for Colombia in 2025 was initially $413 million, focused on peace-building programs, economic and social development, transition away from illicit economies, climate change and biodiversity conservation, according to Colombia's Presidential Agency for International Cooperation (APC).

From 2018 through March 2024, U.S. bilateral cooperation, including military aid, totaled $3.23 billion.

Prior to the USAID funding freeze announcement, the agency was funding 82 programs with total planned spending of $1.69 billion, according to the APC, though the timeline for that spending was unclear.