WEF launches plan to turn philanthropy into climate investments

Prominent philanthropic foundations — including the Bezos Earth Fund, IKEA Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation — joined corporations and public sector groups to launch a new multitrillion-dollar initiative to fight climate change at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. The new global initiative, which WEF spearheaded, is called Giving to Amplify Earth Action, or GAEA, and is the latest global effort to use philanthropic dollars as seed funding for climate-related initiatives in the hopes of attracting investments from the private sector and governments. GAEA’s goal is to “unlock” around $3 trillion in annual financing needed to support efforts to reach net-zero, reverse nature loss, and restore biodiversity by 2050, according to a press release. Members of the initiative include the United Nations, companies such as HCL Technologies Limited, and academic institutions at Cambridge and Columbia universities, among others. Its membership also includes several global philanthropies such as the Arab Foundations Forum; ClimateWorks Foundation; Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Open Society Foundations; and Philanthropy Asia Alliance, a $200 million initiative led by the Singaporean Temasek Trust. For-profit consulting firm McKinsey & Company will partner with the initiative to help identify “real world opportunities and trends” where public, private, and philanthropic interests can work together, Tracy Francis, a senior partner and chief marketing officer at McKinsey, said during a launch event for GAEA Tuesday. The philanthropy sector’s involvement in GAEA is key because, unlike public and private financing, philanthropic giving is “nimble, more tolerant of risks and is driven by values and long-term outcomes rather than quarterly returns,” the press release reads. “We are at a tipping point in our efforts to put the planet back on track to meet our climate ambitions. To reach the speed and scale required to heal the Earth’s systems, we need to unlock not only private capital and government funds, but also the philanthropy sector as a truly catalytic force to achieve the necessary acceleration,” Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and executive chair, said in a statement. Historically, though, foundations and other philanthropic organizations have been slow to give to climate causes. Donations to efforts to mitigate climate change continue to hang below 2% of all global giving, according to findings from a recent ClimateWorks Foundation report. Current annual giving to climate action was between $7.5 billion to $12.5 billion out of $810 billion in total global giving to all causes in 2021, the report found. United States climate envoy John Kerry was among those at Davos urging philanthropists to give more. “Well, the lesson I’ve learned in the last year — I learned it as secretary of state and it has since been reinforced in spades — is money, money, money, money, money, money, money,” he said at a panel in Davos. It was the same session where the formation of GAEA was announced. The calls for increased investments in innovations and technologies to address climate change seem to be catching the attention of young and emerging philanthropists in Asia, Desmond Kuek, CEO of Temasek Trust, said Tuesday at the launch event for GAEA. “There is a lot of catching up to do in Asia, but there is also a lot of optimism that in Asia, there is a lot of interest now in moving towards sustainability, impact and philanthropy,” he said. Asia also is on the precipice of a “huge generational transfer of wealth” that will be “in the order of trillions of dollars,” Kuek said. And the next generation of the wealthy are thinking about “leaving a legacy for the future and making sure that what they do has impact,” he said. Some members of GAEA are part of other philanthropy-public-private alliances that seek to increase investments in renewable energy and other climate initiatives by using philanthropic funding as the foundation. Bezos Earth Fund, IKEA Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet more than a year ago with the goal of raising $100 billion in public and private capital and picked up new partners at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt last fall. The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and others such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, are also part of a coalition to reduce methane emissions worldwide.