On Monday, August 10, 2021, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released yet another report highlighting the dire situation humanity and our planet will be in if we don’t curb carbon emissions immediately, and keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The 2018 report gave us just 12 years to reverse course on a warming planet, and protect humankind from an onslaught of natural disasters, heatwaves, floods, and forest fires.
Three years later, not only have we failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the consequences of decades of industrial development, burning of fossil fuels, and widespread deforestation are being felt across the globe.
Fossil fuel use is the single largest contributor to carbon emissions, constituting 65% of the CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere. On top of that, the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.
If we want to reverse course on the climate crisis we need to hold corporations accountable – those responsible for the bulk of the pollution. Because right now, those least responsible for the causes of climate change are most severely experiencing the impacts.
Everyone on Earth has to be a part of climate solutions, and this includes civic associations of everyday people holding leaders and corporations accountable. These associations are under-funded around the world, yet they are critical to the worldwide cultural shift that has to happen to move away from a reliance on fossil fuels.
This is where philanthropy can step in.
Out of the $450 billion in U.S. philanthropic giving in 2019, less than 2 percent went to climate change mitigation, according to a 2020 ClimateWorks Global Intelligence report. Beyond that, even less funding is going to solutions focused on a just transition, or solutions being identified internationally at the grassroots level. We need climate solutions that work, and that ensure a better future for each person on earth, not just those in developed countries.
We need climate justice.
Through our grantmaking, Global Greengrants funds a large and diverse movement for climate justice. Our funding inherently supports localized organizing and action, but also serves to tie together activist groups into networks, coalitions, and campaigns in order to leverage knowledge and resources and increase power in order to challenge the systems that drive climate change and social injustice.
There is a huge opportunity now for others in philanthropy to step up. To put more resources into climate justice, and to fund with an intersectional lens and approach that includes solutions led by all people impacted by the climate crisis – women, Indigenous, youth, and persons with disabilities included.
Our partners at The CLIMA Fund released a report called Soil to Sky: Climate Solutions That Work, which uplifts the solutions that have too often been excluded from climate philanthropy, yet have great potential for scaled impact on the most urgent crisis of our time. These solutions include agroecology, community renewables, direct resistance to extractive industries, and Indigenous Peoples as frontline defenders.
This report brings together the best available research to demonstrate how blending traditional and local knowledge with advocacy and alliance building can create lasting change to cool the planet and build equity and rights-based resilience for the long-term, something we need to see to avoid climate catastrophe.
Philanthropy also needs to double down on support to youth and youth movements, and invest in community participation in climate resilience. These important insights into community action in the Pacific Islands are just one example.
The most recent IPCC report is calling attention to the urgency of our situation, but all hope is not lost. We can reverse course on climate change, and it will take challenging the corporations and industries who created this mess in the first place, and putting resources into effective solutions at all levels, including those from the grassroots.
We’re all in this together. Philanthropy – let’s step up.