Prime Minister Boris Johnson's pledge of £11.6bn to help poorer countries tackle climate change will be funded from the Government's aid budget, according to the Independent.
At last month's G7 summit in Cornwall, Mr Johnson hailed the £11.6bn commitment over five years, saying: "We, as the rich nations of the Earth, we need to build our credibility with those countries in asking them to make cuts in CO2.
"Because this country, which started the Industrial Revolution, is responsible for a huge budget of carbon that’s already in the atmosphere."
The funds would contribute to a planned $100bn UN annual fund to tackle the climate emergency.
But the report said the Government has "quietly conceded" the £11.6bn will come from official development assistance (ODA), the aid budget.
Campaigners say this breaks a UN agreement that the climate funding must be "new and additional".
The Government has previously come under fire for its existing plans to cut the aid budget by £4bn a year, with the World Health Organisation warning "hundreds of thousands of people" will die as a result.
Climate Action Network UK director Catherine Pettengell said: "Reducing the aid budget, while at the same time drawing on it as the only source of climate finance, will inevitably harm the most vulnerable in society."
Oxfam senior climate adviser Tracy Carty added: "We welcome the UK’s commitment to climate finance, but when it’s coming from a declining aid budget it’s a bit like your bailiff leaving a bunch of flowers.”
Shadow international development secretary Preet Gill said the “empty greenwashing” would hit “the world’s most vulnerable people and weaken their ability to take action on the climate crisis”.
The Foreign Office said the “international climate finance commitments are new and additional to any previous commitments” to the UN fund.
A spokesperson said: "While the seismic impact of the pandemic on the UK economy has forced us to take tough but necessary decisions, the UK aid budget this year will still be more than £10bn, making us one of the biggest donors in the G7."
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