Discover our first report on mobilising against the climate challenge

Although the protection of the environment has been one of the challenges of the Foundation since its creation, in a more intuitive way from the Sustainable Food line but also from the Citizen Art line, two years ago we wanted to start and support a broad philanthropic movement to fight climate change. From Madrid to Paris, from Brussels to Rome, from London to Rio, more than 460 foundations from different fields have committed to adopting structural measures in the face of the climate emergency. As signatories of this manifesto, today we share our first assessment of the actions we have taken.

The seven pillars of our commitment

More than a year ago, we began building coalitions and manifestos around the world to encourage the philanthropy ecosystem to mobilize and take structural action to fight the causes and effects of climate change. Today, we are launching our first report on mobilising the climate challenge, in which we recap the results of this first year of action, in light of the progress we have been able to make around seven pillars:

PILLAR 1 – Learning and sharing knowledge
PILLAR 2 – Include climate in the Foundation’s
internal operationsPILLAR 3 – Innovate and grow as a
funding institutionPILLAR 4 – Integrating the climate challenge into financial
strategiesPILLAR 5 – Act with the collective
in mindPILLAR 6 – Mobilizing resources
PILLAR 7 – Reporting with full transparency

This report details and shows the progress made in the various coalitions, internal and external awareness-raising events, our responsible and low-carbon investment policy, sponsorship programmes linked to the climate issue, support for pilot projects and ongoing discussions, support for partners and the other actions we have taken to address the climate emergency.

The climate emergency, transversal to our lines of action

The climate emergency is a cross-cutting challenge to all the Foundation’s action, so it is integrated into the different programmes promoted by the Sustainable Food and Citizen Art lines. From each of the projects, we promote and encourage the climate issue to always be present, in one way or another, to address from different areas a problem that directly affects the future of people and the planet.

We understand Sustainable Food in a holistic and systemic way, including its impacts on our current ecosystem: from biodiversity loss, to global warming and social inequalities related to food production and consumption. Through the projects we support from this line, both in Spain and in France, we strive to achieve more sustainable practices throughout the food chain. Through this, what we seek is to facilitate everyone’s access to healthy food that respects people and ecosystems. In this sense, the model we promote is agroecological, supportive and democratic. This integration must be affirmed in the short and long term, which will be part of the objectives of the Foundation’s next strategy (2024 – 2028).

As for Citizen Art, climate issues are increasingly resonating in the practices and reflections of the cultural ecosystem, as awareness is spreading that a real social transformation must necessarily be framed in a new model of relationship with our environment. Aware of this, in 2021 we launched a new edition of the “Composing Knowledge” call to support projects that bring together artists, researchers and professionals and propose another way of looking at the world, enriching our knowledge and imagining other possibilities. In addition, since 2017, we have participated in the monthly working group “Sustainable Culture”, with which we meet regularly and launch an annual congress, as well as awareness-raising actions for decision-makers.

A mobilization that is already bearing fruit

Although environmental and social issues have been the backbone of the Foundation’s actions since its creation, in the last two years we have given a definitive impetus to raise awareness in the philanthropic field and support the creation of philanthropic coalitions, ensuring that foundations can adequately transform themselves in the face of the challenge of the climate emergency. On this path, we do not cease to stress the need to understand the climate emergency not as an isolated challenge, but as something transversal to many other challenges and, therefore, that must be observed from a multitude of and from the interrelation of all social causes. This first report on our first steps of mobilization in the face of the climate challenge reviews the history of this collective mobilization for the future of people and our planet.

In Spain, our commitment has materialized in the philanthropic coalition Foundations for the Climate, promoted together with the Spanish Association of Foundations (AEF) at the end of 2020. It is an open movement that more than 150 foundations have already joined to jointly build transition tools for organizations, as well as integrate the climate emergency and social justice into their projects, whatever their field of action. Joining this coalition includes the signing of the Climate Foundations Pact, through which the signatory organisations make a series of specific commitments to adapt their operation to a more environmentally friendly model.

Illustration credits: Irate Eguren