Increasing, but far from enough: Study on climate funding trends

Original content from climateworks.org

In 2022, the amount of philanthropic funding for climate change mitigation remained essentially unchanged from the previous year — a slowdown from the consistent growth we saw in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Climate giving showed some resilience in 2022 despite challenging global economic conditions, but ultimately fell short of the scale needed to address the crisis. In this decisive moment for the planet, philanthropy must rapidly raise its ambition for advancing transformative climate solutions — in partnership with a wider range of communities, movements, and organizations — and move more funds faster to the places that need them most.

• Funding for climate change mitigation is still growing, but its growth rate is stagnating
• An expanding community of grantees
• Clean electricity remains the largest category for foundation funding for climate mitigation, followed by forests and food & agriculture
• A growing emphasis on equity and justice
• Shifting approaches and strategies and increased collaboration
• Tackling super pollutants such as methane records the fastest funding growth by sector
• Foundation funding to Africa increased faster than to any other region and has more than tripled over the last 5 years. However, it still represents only 6% of total foundation funding.