Philanthropy’s defining test: From risk aversion to climate and gender justice
The climate crisis is forcing every institution to confront what role it intends to play in this century. Philanthropy cannot replace public finance or take on government responsibilities. But it can help move toward models that are more just, more effective, and more capable of meeting the scale of the challenge ahead.
For generations, philanthropy has stepped in during moments of profound social and environmental strain, when governments were unwilling or unable to act—funding grassroots environmental justice campaigns in communities exposed to toxic pollution when regulatory protections fell short, or backing reproductive rights organisations when legal protections and public funding came under threat. Today, we are facing another such moment. At a time of shrinking aid budgets, geopolitical instability, and mounting coordinated backlash against gender and climate agendas, the question is not whether private philanthropy can afford to fund gender-just climate action—it is whether they can afford not to.
The climate crisis is accelerating faster than climate finance is adapting. Recent scientific findings on the Amazon rainforest underscore that the 1.5°C target was never intended as a political aspiration to negotiate around; it was a physical limit beyond which ecosystems risk irreversible collapse. Yet too much climate finance architecture still behaves as though there is infinite time to deliberate, pilot, and delay. There is not. And while urgency dominates climate discourse, another misunderstanding persists: systemic change will not come through short-term fixes. Real transformation requires long-term trust, patient partnership, and the willingness to invest beyond political and funding cycles.
A key obstacle to real transformation is that global finance also fails to reach those at the frontlines. According to OECD-DAC data, only a very small share of international climate finance reaches civil society organisations directly, and an even smaller proportion reaches women-led groups working at the frontline of climate impacts. Only 0.17 percent of all reported climate funding purports to be locally led and only 311 transaction lines out of approximately 140,000 in total of climate finance reported via the OECD DAC over the eight years studied included the terms ‘locally led’ or ‘community led’. Only 0.7 percent of all reported climate finance made any mention of the keyword ‘Indigenous’. Despite years of rhetoric around localisation, locally led adaptation and locally led development, most funding continues to flow through large international institutions, multilayered ineffective intermediaries, and complex compliance structures that are inaccessible to grassroots actors. The result is inefficient—even more in times of multiple crises when funding becomes scarce.
Yet evidence increasingly shows that investing in women-led climate action are among the most effective investments available. Women-led and community-based organisations are often first responders during climate disasters, key stewards of biodiversity and food systems, and central actors in building long-term resilience of communities. Their work is inherently systemic because it reflects lived realities where climate, economic inequality, care systems, land rights, energy access, democracy, and political participation are inseparable. The problem is that the climate finance architecture was not designed to resource them and that private philanthropy remains too cautious while the window for effective climate action narrows. This is why the conversation about climate finance must move beyond volume alone and focus on allocation, access, and power. The principles of locally led adaptation, increasingly recognised within international climate policy, are clear: local institutions and communities must have direct access to finance and decision-making power over how adaptation priorities are defined, implemented, and evaluated. Equally important is the recognition that resilience depends on combining scientific, local, and Indigenous knowledge systems rather than imposing externally designed solutions.
For donors uncertain about where to make their most strategic climate investment, the answer may be simpler than it appears: A diverse range of funds across the Global South (including feminist funds, women’s funds, socio-environmental funds, among others) are channelling finance to local communities to drive social, environmental, climate, gender just and economic solutions. Late last year during COP30, many of these funds came together for the first edition of The Global South House, a platform designed to place the voices, experiences and needs of local communities at the heart of finance for climate, nature and people. The discussions there showcased how these funds are pioneering ways to mobilise resources to advance socio-environmental and gender justice by bringing resources to where they are needed the most and supporting locally-led approaches that reflect the realities of each context. These funds and their partners represent a crucial infrastructure that enables and strengthens community-led and locally-led solutions, having spent decades building trusted relationships with grassroots movements. They know how to move resources quickly, responsibly, and effectively, ensuring they reach those who need them the most, including women-led organisations working in the intersection of gender and climate justice. And they do so not just through the mobilisation of funds, but also through the provision of technical support and capacity strengthening, with the organisational development of partners and grassroots groups being a central objective of their support, while advocating for systemic reform of climate finance. They understand political realities, security risks, and cultural contexts in ways private philanthropy often cannot. Their work therefore generates multiplier effects far beyond just providing resources. They strengthen democratic participation, build adaptive capacity, increase accountability, improve programme relevance, and enable faster responses during crises.
At a time when governments are cutting aid budgets and retreating from international commitments, philanthropy has a chance to step forward – not simply as a funder, but as part of a broader ecosystem capable of reshaping climate finance itself. This doesn’t mean taking the role of government. Instead, it requires funding not only frontline climate solutions, but also the organisations advocating for systemic reform of climate finance architecture at national, regional, and international levels. A mindset shift is necessary. The current public climate finance landscape is in a deadlock situation—where well-meant discussion on LLA bog down in technical debates about accountability and risk. Philanthropy has the unique opportunity to lead us out of this deadlock by funding movements that lead the way. It involves supporting movements and actors pushing for equitable access, participatory governance, debt justice, and accountability within global climate institutions by philanthropy itself leveraging its influence to call for change. It means recognising that who controls climate finance is inseparable from whether climate action succeeds.
Communities already responding to climate impacts often spend disproportionate amounts of time navigating bureaucratic funding requirements instead of implementing solutions. The Global South House discussions stressed, there is a mismatch in funding priorities; ‘set solutions,’ strict conditions, and complex bureaucratic processes that characterise mainstream financing processes; timelines and modalities of mainstream financing mechanisms do not align with the needs of the communities. Local organisations with the deepest contextual knowledge and strongest relationships to affected communities, such as Indigenous and women-led organisations, remain systematically underfunded. This is particularly true for organisations working at the intersection of gender justice and climate resilience.
If those closest to injustice are also closest to the solutions, then philanthropy’s role is not to design change from above, but to resource and accompany the leadership already emerging from communities themselves. Discussions at the Global South House highlighted the importance of philanthropy moving beyond transactional and short-term approaches by working more intentionally with local, feminist, women’s, and socio-environmental funds that already have deep relationships of trust and accountability with communities. Philanthropy has much to learn from the ways these funds provide flexible and responsive support while also investing in long-term capacity strengthening and movement-building. Moving forward, this requires funders to transform their own internal mechanisms to make unrestricted, flexible, and long-term funding possible, develop sustained relationships with partners rather than project-based engagements, and adopt locally led adaptation (LLA) principles that place decision-making power closer to affected communities. Trust, in this context, is not an abstract value but an operational necessity. Supporting climate resilience means recognising that ecosystems are restored over decades, political movements are built over generations, and that climate resilience itself cannot be measured quarterly.
If philanthropy is serious about climate action, then funding this infrastructure/ecosystem of actors driving locally led solutions—especially women-led and gender-just organisations—should not sit at the margins of climate strategy; it should be recognised as one of its highest-return investments. Not because it is politically fashionable or morally persuasive, but because it works. Some philanthropies, for example, are endorsing the principles on locally led adaptation, joining more than 100 governments, international organisations, and local and national NGOs in advancing concrete strategies to put resources and decision-making power in local hands.
The era of treating gender-just locally led climate action as a pilot project or side commitment must end. We do not have the luxury of staying in our comfort zone while ecosystems approach irreversible tipping points and communities absorb the consequences of institutional hesitation. History shows that transformative change has never begun with unanimous consensus. It began when a minority chose to lead before it was comfortable, popular, or guaranteed to succeed. This is one of those moments. Philanthropy can continue protecting its own sense of certainty—or it can help build the conditions for a livable and more equitable future. The choice will shape not only the future of climate finance, but the legitimacy of philanthropy itself in a century defined by crisis.
Paula Sevilla Nuñiez is a Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a knowledge partner of The Global South House. Her work focuses on Majority World philanthropy, as well as on policies to advance housing justice.
Noemi Grütter is Head of Advocacy and Partnerships at the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action.
Juliana Tinoco is Executive Coordinator of Alianza Socioambiental Fondos Del Sur (Socio-Environmental Funds of the Global South) and The Global South House.
This article is part of a series of pieces Alliance and GAGGA are producing together ahead of Funding climate action at scale: Lessons from effective global philanthropy, an event hosted during London Climate Action Week on 22 June at 10:00 BST.