285: Can philanthropy fill the hole left by USAID?

Christiana: [00:19:52] Mostly some they don't, but mostly they pay the loans back. And then you have another pod completely different, which is private sector companies investing for a rate of return into projects that they feel are commercially viable and interesting to them. But just to understand that philanthropy, which is at the start of that gamut, is very, very critical. It's a small, tiny little piece. It is in the billions, not in the trillions, which is what we have in foreign direct investment. But it is a very critical piece to allow for the trillions from private sector investment to flow. And we thought it would be helpful to speak to someone who's actually working in this space. So I am delighted to be joined today by my good friend Helen Mountford, Mountford, who is CEO and president of Climate Works Foundation, which is a global platform for philanthropy into high impact climate projects around the world that benefit both people and the planet. Helen, thank you so much for joining us here.

Helen Mountford: [00:21:01] Thank you, Christiana. I'm delighted to be here today.

Christiana: [00:21:04] Helen, I think it would be really helpful to hear from you the role that private and or public funding, if it's nonrefundable, if it's donations, aid type funding plays in unleashing the much bigger, much, much bigger levels of funding that are actually needed for the transformation. Right. Because let's understand that these little, little numbers that sound large but are not are really key in being able to open the door to foreign direct investment, Assessment, which is where the real funding is going to come from in the trillions. So please do tell us, Helen, first, from the Climate Works Foundation perspective. How do you operate in this field and what role do you see that Climate Works Foundation, but also philanthropy as a whole in development worldwide?

Helen Mountford: [00:22:10] Thanks, Christiana. Climate Works Foundation, we're really a global platform to help all of philanthropy step up to identify and scale with partners on the ground to know how to do this. To identify and scale solutions to the climate challenge, the climate crisis that deliver benefits for people, for economies, for development. So we're really helping philanthropy work with partners to to do this, providing the data, information, analysis, the spaces to convene and collaborate. And providing big picture strategies around key opportunities for impact and doing grant making associated with that. Now, philanthropy plays such a critical role, but it's a small role, as you said, in terms of the overall numbers that we need to see flowing to support the Sustainable Development Goals and green growth and development objectives globally. But it can be such a critical role because it can be really catalytic.

Christiana: [00:23:07] Exactly.

Helen Mountford: [00:23:07] Philanthropy, at its best can take risks. Um, can think long term and be patient. So this combination means that we can partner with governments and the private sector, do some of the early innovative things that perhaps the private sector or government wouldn't be able to invest in. Test these as we see how they can scale partner then on how do we actually bring the capital together to move that forward quickly? And we also provide some of the tools, analysis data to hold people to account, to look at how to measure greenhouse gas emissions from different sectors, how to actually set targets and implement them. So there's a range of things that philanthropy can really do in partnership with civil society, with governments and with private sector. And that's really what we're looking for. Where are those big picture solutions? How do we drive them forward?

Christiana: [00:23:55] And it's so important to understand that, Helen, because it is not that climate action or development as a whole depends on philanthropy. It's almost like the lubricating fluid that allows for other, bigger funding to take place, because philanthropy, as you say, can be risky. It can take down the first risk. It can experiment, it can fail. It really is the first kind of funding that is so necessary in order to then open up the doors to both development funding that is not donation, it is loans that countries take, but also the private funding, the foreign direct investment that is going to be needed. And we know that the energy transition is going to need anywhere between 1 and $3 trillion a year over quite a few decades, in order to make the energy transition necessary. So it is so fascinating to me that philanthropy, whether it's public or private, plays such a key role, despite the fact that the numbers are relatively small. It's the quality. It is the contribution of what it makes, isn't it?

Helen Mountford: [00:25:16] I think that's absolutely right. And I love your analogy of the sort of lubricating rule, a number of the solutions that philanthropy have helped to innovate, to start, to really start to scale would probably have come along, but might have come along a lot later. So bringing forward in time some of these solutions, getting them to a starting point, getting them to market, tipping points, that's something that philanthropy can help do. Which means that we have much cleaner air. Better jobs, better economies, more competitive industries. Green industries earlier than we would have otherwise. And we're actually moving forward on addressing the climate crisis much more quickly. So, I mean, climate philanthropy at the moment has reached almost $5 billion per year. So again, small compared to the numbers you're talking about. Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, it's actually quintupled five times greater in terms of the philanthropic foundation funding to climate. So it's really moved forward there.

Christiana: [00:26:15] Helen, can you actually give us some real on the ground examples of where philanthropy is making a difference?

Helen Mountford: [00:26:21] Let me give you two that are fabulous examples of work that we're engaged with, with a lot of partners on the ground in countries around the world. One is really on electric vehicle uptake, which is an area that we're seeing exponential growth of EVs around the world. And initially back in 2020, a number of partners came together and said, let's focus on the four big markets EU, US, China and India and let's try to reach 15% of market share being EVs by 2026. At the time, everyone said this is really ambitious. It's going to be hard to reach that. Well, now we're just entering 2025 and we've got 25% of the market already, EVs and new sales in those regions, 25%. So we've reached some market tipping points there and are focusing on the other countries, emerging developing countries and how to move forward there. In a couple of countries that we've been working in, in Africa, for example, have found that electric motorbikes have actually saved those who are doing delivery or doing services on these e-bikes, 41% more income. They're getting 41% more income than what they would otherwise because of the electric vehicles.

Christiana: [00:27:35] Now, Helen, someone listening to this would say, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, Helen. Electric vehicles. That's a commercial activity. Why does that need philanthropy to get it up and running?

Helen Mountford: [00:27:47] So again, it's an area where it probably would come along, but it would come along much, much slower. So what we've done has been able to work together, not just with the manufacturers of EVs, but also with governments, with local groups to actually show how this can progress. So the example I gave of boosting driver income, it's Rwanda and Kenya where we've seen that happen. As we start to show those examples and the benefits that can be had, that can move into a private market, that can move forward. But without that demonstration effect, it's lower.

Christiana: [00:28:20] So it's that the philanthropic funding is there to do two things. One, to help governments understand what the benefits are to their citizens and hence accelerate regulation. And secondly, to bring down the investment risks. Once you get it over the hump of commercial pricing. Is that right? So so it's both helping governments to get to where they need to. But also those who invest privately.

Helen Mountford: [00:28:53] Yes. And it can be either about bringing down the risks, or it can be about demonstrating the opportunities here from a market perspective, or getting it to a point where it can be taken on by the market.

Christiana: [00:29:03] Thank you for going into that, and I sorry I interrupted you when you were going to give us a second example.

Helen Mountford: [00:29:09] Yes, I wanted to share one about clean cooling, which is so essential cooling air conditioning fans actually takes an enormous amount of energy, and it is so essential. We're seeing around the world the devastating heat waves hitting countries. And many, many of the households in these countries don't have access to clean cooling. They don't have access to any cooling. So we want to ensure that they can get access to cooling. They need it. It's life saving in many cases says. And we want to do it in a way where we're not having as much emissions. And so there's a number of areas where philanthropy has been helping working with governments, working with cooling manufacturers to actually progress this forward. And India has been a bit of a champion on this and really moving forward. And they have something there, the Energy Efficiency Services Limited company. So the ESL has done this fan program where they've got an aggregated demand for 10 million super efficient fans. They use half as much energy as regular fans. They've pulled these together as they went to a large scale. The 10 million they were able to bring down the unit cost so is competitive with what other fans were going for in India. And so they're getting out these much more efficient fans. We're also doing work on air conditioners. And one of the things that philanthropy did was came together and sort of set up a competition, a prize for air conditioning manufacturers, saying, who can come up with air conditioning units that are five times more efficient, so five times less polluting than the current ones? Who can do that?

Christiana: [00:30:44] Is that in the US or internationally?

Helen Mountford: [00:30:46] Internationally? Internationally it was done again in partnership with the Government of India and others. So internationally, looking at how do we get these much more efficient air conditioners manufactured and then bring them down to costs that are competitive with current commercial air conditioners? So having done that competition, there's a number of models now they're being tested and they're going to be rolled out. I mean Christiana this is again an exponential scale. If we can go to five times more efficient air conditioners. The savings are huge. And by 2050 we could save as much emissions as we're emitting globally each year now just by moving towards us.

Christiana: [00:31:25] Well save emissions, but also save money for the users of those air conditioners. So it is about improving the standard of living. Both of these examples improve the standard of living of the people that are benefiting from these two technologies. Now my question to you is how will projects such as these be affected by the new political winds that we're seeing in Washington by the closing of USAID, by maybe other countries deciding that they're not going to be as supportive as they have been in the past. We're really facing headwinds here about all of these issues. Is climate work's losing sleep over this?

Helen Mountford: [00:32:11] Absolutely. I think a lot of us in the US are losing sleep over this and around the world. We're in a situation that's very, very difficult from our side. Most of the people we're talking to are definitely staying in, continuing to fund in the US or increasing funding. Some shifting the direction they're doing. Most of our funding, over 85% of the funding we do goes to countries outside the US where global organization. And one of the things we're looking at very closely is where are we losing funds through the USAID? Are there opportunities where philanthropy can help step in, can pivot? We cannot replace in any way, shape or form the gaps that we're seeing in the US government funding, but we can step in and help create a bridge. We can work with other partners. We're seeing other local philanthropy in a number of countries starting to step up and say, how do we help to move things forward in a context where the US is not in from a crisis? How do we make opportunities come out right and be able to actually move things forward? So there's a lot of pivoting that's happening both within the US in terms of strategies to really defend what has been put in place so far, to work with other partners, the states, the business opportunities, how to do the litigation. There's been some fabulous cases going forward from Earthjustice, from NRDC here, trying to defend things like climate information for farmers. This is essential for farmers in the US. They need that to be able to adjust when they do crops, when they do harvest. And at the moment USDA was going to take that down. So how do we defend that?

Christiana: [00:33:49] So so let me understand us farmers have no idea what climate shifts they're going to have to face in order to prepare themselves for harvesting or growing.

Helen Mountford: [00:34:01] It's in process. I haven't looked at the websites at the moment, but what is happening we're seeing is across all agencies, they're trying to scrub and take out any climate related data and information. And we know, you know, I mean, we talk to investors, business leaders, farmers around the world. This information is so critical because we have real risks of climate impacts and opportunities of moving forward. But those risks, if we're not able to understand those material risks, if farmers aren't able to understand what's happening in terms of climate projections and what's going to happen to their their farmlands. If investors aren't able to understand that that is a real step backwards in terms of how we globally can tackle climate change and adapt and build resilience to these impacts.

Christiana: [00:34:49] So something like that, that really, you know, just hits so hard a whole sector, is that an area again where philanthropy can easily or even with difficulty step in. Who's who's stepping in to make up for the closure of us and for the craziness that we're seeing in Washington.

Helen Mountford: [00:35:11] So we're actually helping support this broader network of those stepping in. Certainly, we're seeing a lot of the civil society organizations, a lot of philanthropy, philanthropy, backing the civil society organizations, helping support states where we've got governors who recognize the importance of climate action. I mean, we have a number of organizations that have taken some of that data from the US government websites and our housing, not elsewhere, before it gets taken down from the website. So how do we keep that valuable data analysis insights as a public good? How do we keep that going? The litigation right. That's happening now to take cases against the government, like opening up waters, coastal waters for oil and gas drilling, which have been closed. Where there's these activities, there's that litigation going forward from various different groups. So there's quite a bit that is happening here. There's also this attention to how do we globally move forward. I have to say, I was just in Brazil last week, Christiana, and it was fantastic to see some of the leadership there. What Lula has done on really reversing the deforestation trends that we saw under Bolsonaro is incredible.

Helen Mountford: [00:36:23] But also their development bank, the Brazilian National Development Bank, are really focused on how do they move forward on green infrastructure? How did they. As you were saying, really leverage private capital. Bring private capital into this to make the investments. And they just see this as an opportunity. So, I mean, I think we're seeing in different countries, the national governments, the private sector, the investors, the philanthropic high net worth individuals in Asia, in Brazil, in Africa. A lot of them are also saying, how do we step up at this moment? Because this is the direction we want our economies to go. It's the only growth trajectory of the future. So we want to keep going. And how do we help to counter what's happening in the US? So I bring that up because while there is a lot that we can do from philanthropy, it's still a small drop in the bucket compared to what others can do. And it is this whole community effort that's going to be so essential as we move forward.

Christiana: [00:37:20] You know, Helen, as I as I listened to you, I really wonder if 5 or 10 years from now we're going to look back and go like, wow. That was the moment in which we pulled ourselves up from the bootstraps. And we're so many different people, institutions, efforts, initiatives that were were there but sort of hiding in the, in the woodwork. Um, actually really stepped up and stepped in and assumed the responsibility. I don't really want to, you know, precipitate a silver lining from the craziness that we're seeing in Washington. But I think there's a non-zero chance that the shock that we're all suffering from and the viciousness that we're seeing is actually awakening a very different spirit in many of us, and much more of a commitment to 2X3X4X, the efforts that we have been doing so. I hold that hope that that is what is happening. It's very painful that the price that we're paying and the fact that so many millions of people in the short run are going to be so devastatingly affected, if not losing their life. That's a tall price to pay. And I wonder whether, after the shrapnel shower from Washington has settled, whether we're going to have a much more active development and solidarity movement than we had before. Do you think that's possible, I hope. Or am I the diehard optimist here? Helen?

Helen Mountford: [00:39:16] No, I mean, I'm going to I'm going to fully agree with you on this, Christiana. I think it's you coined the phrase stubborn optimism. I think this is a moment where we're seeing absolutely devastating impacts, and we're going to see devastating impacts from what's happening. And it's tragic that we have to go through this. On the other hand, what I'm already starting to see and hear and pick up in other countries around the world, particularly a lot of these emerging and developing economies, they're just saying that is not the path we want to go to. We want to go forward to these competitive economies that are green, healthier for our people, more competitive. And I mean, these are the solutions of the future. It's not about going backwards to fossil fuels, despite what all the fossil fuel lobbyists will want to make us believe. It's not about going backwards. It's actually about going forwards. And I think we're going to see more momentum and more coming together across different sectors than we've seen before. We all need to keep working as best we can to make that happen. That is the future we need. And we cannot have more of this sort of tragic slipping backwards that we're seeing. So we need to really stay in and push us forward. But I think it's possible, I definitely do.

Christiana: [00:40:28] Wow. Helen, I am so glad that I reached out to you today. Thank you so much. Thank you. We really thank you so much. Thank you for joining us here in this conversation. Thank you for giving us a light there at the at the top of a hill.

Helen Mountford: [00:40:45] Thank you. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you. And we keep fighting.

Christiana: [00:40:48] We do indeed.

Helen Mountford: [00:40:49] Thank you.

Christiana: [00:40:52] Okay, listeners. So that's a wrap for today. How surprising. Because honestly, I thought that Helen was going to come with a very morose message, like, all the funding is being cut. We don't know what we're doing. And how delightful to hear that she is seeing so many other people, institutions, foundations, initiatives stand up and step into the vacuum that has been left by the US. I'm just thrilled. But then again, I'm always thrilled about optimistic people. What can I do? What is really clear is that this requires a lot of hard work, but probably with more reward, because this is going to be very much a bottom up effort and less a top down effort, because those at the top have exited and those at the bottom are stepping in. So a scenario with a lot of reward for everyone who is helping to move this forward. Folks, thanks very much to all of you for listening. We will be back next week with a special episode for International Women's Day. You won't want to miss that conversation. In the meantime, please make sure you leave us a review as it really helps others to find the show. Bye and see you next week!