{"id":225925,"date":"2025-10-01T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insidephilanthropy.com\/?p=225925"},"modified":"2025-10-03T14:52:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:52:29","slug":"a-mixed-picture-for-climate-philanthropy-following-climate-week-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insidephilanthropy.com\/home\/a-mixed-picture-for-climate-philanthropy-following-climate-week-nyc","title":{"rendered":"A Mixed Picture for Climate Philanthropy Following Climate Week NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos began his speech<\/a> at Climate Week NYC by thanking the United Nations\u2019 deputy secretary and the president\u2019s climate envoy, then moved onto the big news: the Bezos Earth Fund<\/a> would be donating $1 billion for the conservation of nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, that scene feels like it played out in another dimension. Not only did Bezos skip this year\u2019s edition of the just-concluded climate gathering; his philanthropy has not made any such mega-pledges in years, and the current federal administration is more likely to have an oil envoy than a climate one. Instead, one of Bezos\u2019 most recent public appearances came this January at the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who had his own speech last week at the United Nations. Key phrase: Climate change is \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bezos and his fund are not the only donors who were missing in action from the headlines coming out of Climate Week this year. Foundations have long used the September occasion to announce major new initiatives and pledges. Even in years with few pledges, new partnerships or coalitions are usually unveiled. But this year, philanthropy barely made the news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, with Climate Week behind us and November\u2019s United Nations climate conference approaching, the numbers in the air are not newly pledged dollars, but freshly published data on past years\u2019 funding. They add up to a mixed picture of climate philanthropy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last few years, climate funding has climbed encouragingly, with billionaire after billionaire launching new climate philanthropies. Support may still have fallen well short of the scale of the challenge, but the trendline was pointed in the right direction. Now, a crop of new reports show a funding sector that is growing in places, but struggling to match the pace or promise of earlier years. With evidence<\/a> mounting that billionaires are taking a step back from climate, these early returns raise the possibility that an ultra-rich retreat could wipe out the gains of recent years. In other words, the sector may soon see how truly committed its newfound friends are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funding for forest guardians <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start in the forest. According to a new report<\/a> from the Rights and Resources Initiative and Rainforest Foundation Norway, funding for forest guardians is emblematic of the uneven state of climate philanthropy. For ease of reading, I\u2019ll use \u201cforest guardians\u201d in lieu of the report\u2019s phrase, which is Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendent peoples, whose control of their own land is often crucial in forest conservation around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First the good news: Annual funding for collective tenure rights has increased 46% since major funders launched the 2021 Forest Tenure Pledge<\/a> at the Glasgow, Scotland, edition of the annual U.N. Climate Conference, in recognition of forest guardians\u2019 critical role in preserving the natural environment and preventing deforestation. The increase is compared to the four-year period prior to the announcement, with an average of $728 million a year going to such work between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now for the bad: During the past four years, funding for forest guardians has dropped every year. In other words, there\u2019s more support for tenure rights than before the pledge, but the years since that big promise have seen successively fewer dollars. In 2024, for instance, donors gave $642 million, a 23% decline from 2021. And this decline comes despite an ever-expanding philanthropic sector. If the overall trend continues, donors will fall $2.9 billion short of the $10 billion target needed to fulfil a Glasgow pledge to end deforestation by 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A closer look at such spending can be found in the latest annual report<\/a> of the signatories to the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Forest Tenure Pledge<\/a>, who account for roughly half of that funding. The account suggests a relatively rosy funding picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donors have now provided $1.86 billion in pledge-aligned funding, surpassing the pledge\u2019s original $1.7 billion target<\/a> a year ahead of schedule. Funding for Asia, which is home to the world\u2019s largest Indigenous population, has doubled, though it still accounted for only 18% of funding. The largest shares go to Latin America (58%) and Africa (24%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sore spot remains the share of support going directly to organizations led by Indigenous people and local communities. In 2024, just 7.6% of funds went to such groups. That is a remarkable improvement from the first year of the pledge, when the share was just 2.9%. Yet it demonstrates both how hard it is to shift power and how slowly it can proceed. Four years in, still less than eight cents of every dollar goes directly to forest guardians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet foundations have shown faster improvement is possible. Philanthropy sent just 3.8 cents of each dollar directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities in 2021, the first year of the pledge, and even less the next year<\/a>. But that increased to 27 cents in 2023 and hit 34 in 2024. Hopefully, bilateral donors take note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaps in funding for youth climate activism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it goes with the territory, but another group of people who have long played an outsized and underfunded role in climate activism \u2014 namely, youth \u2014 appear to be on a funding trajectory similar to forest guardians, according to another new report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Youth-led groups have seen funding from major climate foundations double, increasing from $42.5 million between 2019 and 2021 to $85.9 million between 2022 and 2024. That\u2019s according to the second Youth Climate Funding Study<\/a> from the Youth Climate Justice Fund and ClimateWorks Foundation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are, however, plenty of caveats to that positive news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, that jump was actually outpaced by the growth of the field, with funding for climate mitigation tripling during that period. Second, the number of grants and funders in this area rose only marginally, suggesting that neither are portfolios expanding nor are new grantmakers joining the fold. Third, U.S.-based groups continue to receive a disproportionate share of support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, grants to youth-led climate movements still account for only 0.96% of climate philanthropy. But the report offers several recommendations for changing the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philanthropies can help, not only by providing oft-requested flexible, multi-year funding, but by bringing youth leaders on as board members and strategists and providing mentoring. Regrantors, too, can chip in by backing training and infrastructure and building networks and peer-learning spaces for such groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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