Numerous programs aimed at averting violence, instability and extremism worsened by global warming are ensnared in the effort to dismantle the main American aid agency, U.S.A.I.D.

One such project helped communities manage water stations in Niger, a hotbed of Islamist extremist groups where conflicts over scarce water are common. Another helped repair water-treatment plants in the strategic port city of Basra, Iraq, where dry taps had caused violent anti-government protests. U.S.A.I.D.’s oldest program, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, ran a forecasting system that allowed aid workers in places like war-torn South Sudan to prepare for catastrophic floods last year.

The fate of these programs remains uncertain. The Trump administration has essentially sought to shutter the agency. A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order. On the ground, much of the work has stopped.

“They were buying down future risk,” said Erin Sikorsky,9x999 director of the Center for Climate and Security and a former U.S. intelligence official. “Invest a little today so we don’t have to spend a lot in the future when things metastasize.”

The German government this week released a report calling climate change “the greatest security threat of our day and age,” echoing a U.S. intelligence report from 2021, which described climate hazards as “threat multipliers.”

Some U.S.A.I.D. funding supported mediation programs to prevent local clashes over land or water. For instance, as the rains become erratic in the Sahel region of Africa, bordering the Sahara, clashes between farmers and cattle herders become more frequent.

Because of problems with Starliner’s propulsion system during its approach to the space station in June, NASA officials decided not to put the astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, on Starliner for the return trip. They will spend an additional five months on the space station as part of the crew before coming back to Earth around February in a spacecraft built and managed by SpaceX.

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