ClimateWorks' new CEO Helen Mountford talks climate accountability

Helen Mountford, the new president and CEO of ClimateWorks Foundation, doesn’t have a typical philanthropy background. Instead of giving grants in previous years, she received them for her climate, policy, economic, and development work. Now in her new role, she sees an opportunity to bring her experience as a grantee to the other side of the table to help improve the process for organizations working on climate initiatives. Devex recently sat down with Mountford, who is just a few weeks into her tenure at ClimateWorks, which is a nonprofit organization with a team of researchers, strategists, and grant-makers. Mountford is stepping into the role after most recently serving as vice president of climate and economics at World Resources Institute. She also spent nearly two decades at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In a wide-ranging interview, she discussed her vision for the organization and where she sees opportunities for more collaborations and partnerships. “So my interest really coming in here and what I’m seeing is just how much urgency there is in the climate space, how much we need to do, but also how much progress has been made that we now need to capitalize on,” she said. Recent data from ClimateWorks has shown that less than 2% of global philanthropy funding has gone toward climate change mitigation. Mountford said that she would like to see philanthropy play a bigger role in meeting climate goals. She also wants to help track climate commitments made by countries, philanthropic organizations, and corporations around last November’s COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, the level of which she said reflected the sense of urgency being felt around the world amid an increase in climate-related natural disasters. Those pledges included the International Philanthropy Commitment on Climate Change spearheaded by WINGS, a network of philanthropic groups. A coalition of several governments and 17 private funders also announced plans to make a five-year, $1.7 billion commitment to fund Indigenous and local communities working to protect tropical forests and a separate coalition of foundations and financial institutions launched an initiative to raise $100 billion in public and private capital to invest in renewable energy. The next step is to begin implementing those commitments and holding organizations accountable for fulfilling those pledges, Mountford said. She laid out her vision for how that might be accomplished. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Where are you seeing opportunities to further ClimateWork’s mission following COP 26? We had so many commitments come forward from countries, from corporates, from cities, but now the hard work happens of how do you actually implement those. We still need to further step up ambition, but how do you implement what's been committed? How do you actually hold them to account, track that, and make sure this is all happening? And one of the challenges in this space has been that we don't have the finance flowing collectively to deliver what we need on climate. To me, philanthropy is really exciting because it is a space where you can actually use funds really strategically to complement or to fill gaps or to really sort of innovate and move things forward, which aren't gonna happen in the private sector or the public sector. So as we look at the urgency right now, this is a space where we can target funds well to really innovate and move things forward. ClimateWorks to me is so critical because it actually helps to bring together the broader philanthropic space to provide services and support to them, whether it's through targeted programs that help to channel their funds, or its convenings, intelligence, understanding the landscape of opportunities and who's doing what and how to ensure we can actually all together ensure that some of what we're doing adds up to more than just the parts of what individuals are doing How do you think your experience at WRI will influence your approach? At WRI, we benefited from all of this. Being on the other side of the table you see how it works. You would have discussions with different funders, and sometimes it was very clear that they had not connected and did not know what the other was doing. Also, one of the things that ClimateWorks is really working on is how do we streamline our processes. How do we ensure that we get money out the door more quickly, but do it at the right places? How do we reduce some of the burden on grantees so that they're able to actually focus on doing their work rather than just the reporting? From my side, it’s also a strong focus on the climate science and the economic, political, social perspective. How do you build the support, the understanding of the public of the politicians — the willingness to take action — and that depends on this broader sort of political economy and understanding of social benefits such as employment, equity, benefits, etc. When you say streamline processes for grantees, what does that look like? Might these changes include giving more unrestricted grants? One of the things we're trying to do as part of our sort of racial and social justice journey and what we're trying to do to help support some of the grantees who are focusing on these issues and are often smaller, coming into the scene, is working with them to help them through these processes, so that it's not such a burden. Also looking a lot more at unrestricted grants is something that we're thinking about and where is it useful to do that to help build capacity and build the field and allow some institutions to really explore and develop where they've got the right sort of agenda that's very much aligned with what we're trying to do. Rather than going in with very specific projects or programs, in some cases, actually given that core support can really give them a boost up and ability to grow and develop their work and then attract other funds. What are some of the challenges that come with prioritizing equity and social justice in climate funding in an international context? We have some common principles of what we’re trying to do, but then how that gets applied in different geographies and programs is totally different. In the U.S., we actually have made the commitment under the Donors of Color Network to be transparent in our reporting of how we're distributing funds within the U.S. But we are also looking at what does this mean in other regions where we're working and other work programs and it is very different and I think one of the things we're trying to look at is how does this apply to different countries, I would say that some of the work that ClimateWorks has done for even longer already does some of this. Certainly the Drive Electric Campaign has got a very strong basis on equity and community and sort of working with local communities. And again, this is in multiple regions around the world and that will play out differently in China, or India, or Europe, than the U.S. Also if you look at the Climate and Land Use Alliance that’s housed at ClimateWorks one of the things they've been doing for a number of years — I know because I was the grantee at WRI — is doing work with indigenous communities and forest landscapes and looking at land tenure and the benefits of how to do that well in the community of Indigenous people in the Amazon, for example. That's totally different from a discussion you would have here or a discussion you would have in India where there's going to be very different issues.