Committed to the Climate!

The climate is everyone’s business. We have less than 10 years left to change the course of events and make our contribution to the Paris Climate Agreement. We strive to take part in this collective challenge on a daily basis, through our programmes and our investment policy, but also by actively participating in the mobilisation of foundations in Europe. Thus, the French Coalition of Climate Foundations and the #FundacionesPorElClima movement in Spain have just been created.

A common challenge

The Covid-19 health crisis has considerably changed our world and is raising awareness of the different possible paths of reconstruction. However, the origin of this crisis is probably one of the symptoms of a deeper, lasting and global crisis, that of climate change, which is already impacting the most vulnerable and the richness of our ecosystems. The arrival of this crisis and its impacts are a wake-up call for us to act quickly.

“There seems to be a big gap between the awareness of the climate crisis in the discourse of international foundations and philanthropists and their real commitment,” says Marie-Stéphane Maradeix, General Delegate of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, who initiated the debate at the 2019 General Assembly of the European Foundation Center. “To increase funding for foundations on these issues, we need to stop thinking that sectors like the environment, education or health are completely separate from climate change, and instead look at climate as a cross-cutting issue.”

Climate change is already reinforcing existing inequalities and making the major challenges facing societies more difficult to solve. In its dedicated guide, Active Philanthropy provides perspectives for action whatever its mission (justice and democracy, health, education, exclusion, nature preservation) through concrete examples, including that of the Foundation.

Save the Date: Case study Special Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation

Webinar organized by Active philanthropy and Dafné on December 8 from 4 to 5 p.m.

Information and registration

Ready like no other actor to focus on long-term horizons, foundations can play a key role, as Charles Sellen Global Philanthropy Fellow, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, IUPUI, Éléonore Delanoë, Research Fellow and Arthur Gautier Professor, Executive Director, Philanthropy Chair, ESSEC, point out in an article recently published in The Conversation : “Despite insufficient resources to tackle the scale of the climate crisis, philanthropy has several useful cards to play: integrating climate into all programmes and causes, investing and acting in a low-carbon logic, and leveraging public decision-makers by bringing together a plurality of actors around the table.”

Encouraging coalitions across Europe

“In the course of our exchanges and contacts to bring this subject to the table, we realised that initiatives were emerging. The challenge today is to amplify this movement, to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of information,” explains Marie-Stéphane Maradeix. Thus, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation initiated and financed the Philanthropy Coalition for Climate at the European level. Hosted and facilitated by the Dafné network, it was co-created with the help of the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) in Great Britain, the Asociacion Espanola de Fundaciones (AEF), the French Centre for Funds and Foundations (CFF) and the Global Dialogue.

In France, the French Coalition of Climate Foundations was officially launched by the CFF on November 18, 2020, during an event bringing together Nicolas Hulot, Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Mankind and Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of IPCC Group 1. The Coalition has launched a survey of the state of play within the sector and has published a manifesto, a real call to action, collective mobilization and commitment.

With nearly €3 billion dedicated to projects, €28 billion in assets and 130,000 employees, the 42,000 active foundations and endowments represent a significant capacity for action. The Manifesto calls on all philanthropic actors to mobilize, to adopt structural measures according to the reality of each one in order to contribute to the fight against climate change by:

• Acknowledging the urgency of taking action on climate issues, their current impacts and the risks they pose to all of humanity and in particular, the most vulnerable populations.
• Actively and concretely committed to the fight against the causes and effects of climate change by implementing any solution to reduce their impacts.

In Great Britain, the Funders Commitment on Climate Change pact is also on its way.

In Spain, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and the Spanish Association of Foundations (AEF) have energetically and enthusiastically led a Spanish philanthropic coalition: “Fundaciones por el Clima”. A collective adventure carried out with 45 pioneering foundations and launched on 17 November 2020 after numerous exchanges to identify interests, needs and potential.

Our foundation, on the front line

For the past 10 years, we have sought to provide answers to the social and environmental challenges of the^21stcentury, by integrating the challenge of climate change. The foundation has thus allocated, between France and Spain, more than 1,000 grants and more than 80 million euros following the two axes that are ours, Sustainable Food and Citizen Art

Through our Sustainable Food axis, we understand all the dimensions of food, from seed to plate, and their impacts on our current ecosystem: from biodiversity loss, to global warming and inequality. Through the projects we support, in France and Spain, we strive to bring out more sustainable practices, to allow access for all to healthy food, respectful of people and ecosystems and to accelerate the transition. We thus advocate an agroecological, solidarity and democratic approach.

With the Citizen Art axis, we affirm the role of art as the cement of citizenship and as an actor of change to meet the challenges of the contemporary world. Whether in schools, in connection with science, or through the mobilization of artists, the projects supported open the horizons of our knowledge and practices, invent new models for tomorrow, enlighten and encourage citizen participation.

Finally, for several years now, we have oriented the management of our financial assets according to high environmental and social criteria , in line with many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Foundation is a signatory of the Divest/Invest campaign, a commitment that takes the form of investments in climate solutions: carbon-free energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, etc.

Considering impact investing as a powerful and relevant lever for the urgent advent of a more ecological and inclusive economy, we have also developed a dynamic policy, including the creation of a fund dedicated to the food transition, to the tune of €5 million. This fund, called FDNC-SFS (for Sustainable Food Systems), supports players in the social and solidarity economy in scaling up, but also promising food-techs, or other more mature “for profit” models such as players specialising in the organic market. All these models can provide answers to accelerate the transition to a healthy diet that respects the planet’s resources.

“We will continue our active commitment by establishing a climate strategy with a roadmap for the years to come,” concludes Marie-Stéphane Maradeix.