While doing a quick skim through The New York Times, any day of the week, at least three articles on the front page can be connected to climate change. Some examples among many: “Despite what Trump says, Climate Change Threatens Our National Security,” “South Asia is Smothered in Toxic Air, Report Finds,” “Ocean Heat Waves are Threatening Marine Life.”
And that’s just one media outlet, on a Thursday.
It’s easy to say that the topic of climate change is top of mind, at least for those concerned with addressing the biggest obstacle humanity has ever faced.
Yet, aside from endless media attention, what is really happening, worldwide, to counter carbon emissions, industrial development, and rising temperatures that could send the world into chaos?
The answer when it comes to policy from the top down is…not much.
Yet when you look to the bottom, the grassroots level, to those experiencing firsthand the impacts of a changing climate, that’s where the real activity is taking place. And a new report produced by The CLIMA Fund shows how much value there is in these grassroots solutions and why more resources should be placed in the hands of local communities driving change at the local level.
The CLIMA Fund is a collaboration of four organizations: Global Greengrants Fund, Grassroots International, Thousand Currents, and Urgent Action Fund. This collaboration is a pathway for philanthropic funders to directly support Indigenous, women, and youth-led work building climate resilience and mitigating climate chaos.
The new report, “Soil to Sky: Climate Solutions that Work” connects the dots between seemingly small grassroots solutions, carbon mitigation, and building rights-based resilience for the long-term. It brings together the best available research to demonstrate how blending traditional and local knowledge with advocacy and alliance building can create lasting change in all levels of climate change decision-making.
The report powerfully affirms that funders who have traditionally invested in top-down strategies to the climate crisis can also make lasting, effective, and scalable investments in grassroots-driven responses. “Soil to Sky” 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.