Building Resilience: Philanthropy’s Expanding Role in Climate Adaptation

Courtesy: Grist

When global temperatures officially crossed the 1.5°C threshold in 2024, the world’s warnings became reality. The effects, lethal heatwaves, failing harvests, and vanishing water sources, are no longer theoretical. Climate change has moved from forecast to lived experience, straining public health systems, displacing millions, and threatening food and economic stability. The latest Foundation Funding for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience 2025 report by ClimateWorks Foundation paints a picture of escalating urgency, but also of a growing philanthropic momentum.

A Turning Point for Adaptation Funding

Philanthropy has often been the early mover in fields where governments and markets hesitate, and adaptation is no exception. While less than 10% of global climate finance currently targets adaptation, and only a fraction of that reaches the communities most exposed, foundations are beginning to step up. According to ClimateWorks’ analysis, philanthropic funding for adaptation rose to an estimated $870 million in 2024, marking a 120% increase since 2021. The most dramatic jump occurred between 2022 and 2023, when funding leapt from $555 million to $790 million. Just as significant, the number of foundations engaged in adaptation and resilience work has grown by 55% in the same period. This signals not only more money but a wider ecosystem of funders, from large international foundations to regional and community-based entities.

Climate change has moved from forecast to lived experience, straining health systems, displacing millions, and threatening food and economic stability.

Still, these figures remain small compared to the estimated $359 billion annual shortfall in adaptation finance for developing countries, as highlighted by the UN Environment Programme. The challenge now is to translate this philanthropic momentum into systemic, long-term solutions. The ClimateWorks landscape, which draws on self-reported data from more than 40 foundations cross-verified with public filings and philanthropic disclosures to avoid double-counting, offers the most detailed snapshot yet of where the money is flowing, and where it isn’t.

Funding Flows, Gaps, and Imbalances

Between 2021 and 2024, foundation giving clustered around three core sectors: agriculture and food systems, ecosystems and biodiversity, and health. These are intuitive choices, intersecting directly with food security, livelihoods, and human wellbeing. Initiatives under these umbrellas include climate-smart agriculture, resilient aquaculture, nutrition programs, and disease management. By contrast, sectors foundational to resilience, infrastructure, disaster risk management, economy and livelihoods, water, and cities and human settlements received the least attention. While these areas have traditionally relied on public investment, philanthropy has an important catalytic role to play: funding pilot programs, developing early-warning systems, and supporting scalable models that can later attract public or blended finance.

Regionally, funding patterns reveal stark inequities. Nearly 28% of adaptation-related grants were transnational or global in scope, while Africa received the largest regional share of place-based investments. The U.S. and Canada followed, buoyed by the rise of new coalitions focused on domestic climate resilience. In contrast, Asia and Oceania collectively received less than 10% of tracked funding, a striking imbalance given that the region is home to over half the world’s population and some of its most climate-vulnerable nations. Latin America’s share was even smaller, capturing under 3% of total philanthropic adaptation funding between 2021 and 2024. Yet, it is among the regions most at risk. In 2024, drought-induced wildfires ravaged Bolivia’s Chiquitanía, while floods displaced Indigenous Wayuu families in Colombia.

Despite limited resources, local organizations are demonstrating what community-led resilience looks like. Conexsus supports small enterprises across Brazil that preserve forests through sustainable value chains, proving that microgrants can realign incentives away from deforestation. Similarly, Fundo Casa Socioambiental channels small, flexible grants to grassroots projects on water security, disaster risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration. These examples show how relatively modest philanthropic inputs can yield significant ecological and social returns if they reach the right hands.

Between 2021 and 2024, Latin America received under 3% of total philanthropic adaptation funding, even as droughts and floods upend lives from Bolivia to Colombia.

This unequal geography of giving underscores a broader truth: adaptation cannot succeed through fragmented interventions or one-size-fits-all frameworks. The ClimateWorks report highlights that while Africa and the U.S. have captured more attention, countries across Asia, Oceania, and Latin America remain chronically underfunded. Many of these regions face simultaneous crises, coastal flooding, prolonged droughts, and ecosystem collapse, which threaten both local economies and global supply chains. Here, small-scale innovations like Bangladesh’s floating gardens, built on buoyant layers of water hyacinth and compost, or Somalia’s anticipatory cash assistance programs, demonstrate the kind of flexible, community-rooted adaptation that can thrive with even limited investment.

ClimateWorks

Adaptation as a Strategic Imperative for Philanthropy

The ClimateWorks report also underscores a critical shift: major foundations are no longer treating adaptation as a niche issue but as a cross-cutting pillar of their broader missions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, has pledged $1.4 billion between 2022 and 2025 to help smallholder farmers withstand climate shocks. Its work spans climate-resilient crops, digital tools for weather forecasting, and health interventions addressing climate-sensitive diseases like malaria and cholera. The Rockefeller Foundation, long active at the nexus of health and development, has integrated resilience across its portfolio, from a $100 million commitment to regenerative school meal programs to $20 million for climate-smart infrastructure in U.S. cities. Its flagship Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, launched in 2021, has already provided clean energy access to 10 million people and supported over two million jobs. Meanwhile, the India Climate Collaborative (ICC) represents a new model of locally driven philanthropy. By pooling domestic capital to fund open data platforms, diagnostic tools, and community-based adaptation projects, ICC shows how regional leadership can bridge systemic knowledge and funding gaps.

Philanthropy’s comparative advantage lies not in scale, but in flexibility and foresight. Unlike public or corporate finance, foundations can deploy risk-tolerant capital to pilot ideas, gather data, and amplify local leadership. This agility allows them to test novel approaches, like the early cash transfers in Somalia or the regenerative food systems supported by Conexsus, that can later inform national or international frameworks. Moreover, philanthropic networks are increasingly collaborating to expand reach and coherence. The Adaptation & Resilience Collaborative for Funders (ARC), launched at COP28 in Dubai, grew from a collective pledge and now includes more than 70 foundations working to coordinate funding strategies, share data, and prevent duplication. Similarly, the U.S. Philanthropic Coalition for Climate Resilience and the $50 million Adaptation & Resilience Fund established in 2025 show how collective action can unlock both scale and visibility for adaptation as a global priority.

From Momentum to Mandate

If there is one clear message in the ClimateWorks 2025 report, it is that climate adaptation must be woven into every philanthropic agenda, from food security to urban planning. As climate shocks intensify, progress in poverty reduction, health, and education could unravel without resilience safeguards. To that end, the report outlines three key opportunities for funders: expand and integrate adaptation investments across existing portfolios; connect and learn with other funders through platforms like ARC to accelerate collaboration; and deepen collective insight by improving visibility and data sharing across the philanthropic community. These are not incremental steps; they are prerequisites for ensuring that adaptation becomes embedded, measurable, and enduring.

The landscape is shifting, but not fast enough. Climate impacts are multiplying at a pace that dwarfs current investments, and adaptation finance remains dwarfed by mitigation. Yet, the foundations that are leaning in, whether global giants or small grassroots intermediaries, are proving that philanthropy can be both a safety net and a catalyst. In the words of the report’s conclusion, “climate impacts cut across every portfolio and priority that philanthropy engages with.” The task is not merely to respond to a crisis but to reimagine philanthropy’s purpose in an era defined by climate risk. To protect the progress made on health, food, and human development, resilience must become the throughline of all giving. For philanthropy, adaptation is no longer a choice; it is the new baseline for impact.