How have you responded to COVID-19 and the bushfires? Are you increasing, decreasing or maintaining your funding levels?

In terms of the bushfires, we are supporting new constituency groups that are powerful messengers on climate: Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, Farmers for Climate Action and a range of others. 

In terms of COVID-19, we are supporting direct humanitarian relief/food security projects, mostly small grassroots ones we are aware of because of friends who have been involved in local climate movements and are now getting involved in food relief in places like Ghana and Nepal.

We are also stepping up our funding of advocacy. This is a good blog post that outlines why. Climate advocacy groups we are donating to this financial year include: 

• Farmers for Climate Action
• Original Power
• Australian Youth Climate Coalition and SeedMob
• Lock the Gate
• The Next Economy
• Vets for Climate Action

Outside of climate we are also supporting the Change the Record campaign. 

We have also signed up to the Ford Foundation’s COVID-19 pledge where funders pledge to convert project-based funding to general operating support, make current grants all general operating support, increase funding to advocacy, and reduce paperwork and reporting obligations for grantees. I hope that some of these philanthropic practices will become the norm after the pandemic passes – they should be. I wrote a blog on why general operating support, rather than project or campaign funding, should be the norm in climate advocacy. 

What are you hearing from your environmental grantees about the impact of COVID-19 and the fires?

We were on the cusp of a major breakthrough on climate in Australia after the fires – in peoples’ attitudes and concern, in political will, and in funding the sector with AEGN research showing only 2.5 per cent of philanthropy in Australia was going towards the environment.

There was huge momentum after the fires in terms of new climate philanthropy – I was getting approached through Groundswell and the climate organisations I work with by new potential donors wanting to get involved in the space. It felt like it was a moment where we were poised to achieve transformative change in climate policy.

That has changed because of COVID-19 and in some ways, climate has dropped off the agenda of many politicians, media outlets and potentially philanthropists.

However, the economic response to coronavirus is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild our economy in a way that is more diverse and sustainable. There is a big conversation underway about how we rebuild the economy with clean technology at its heart – we’re borrowing this money from future generations, so we need to use that money in a way that serves their interests.

We’ve heard so much about ‘flattening the curve’ during the pandemic, but the same sentiment also applies to the climate crisis. There’s a great  commentary and graph from NYU that captures the importance of climate action using the “flatten the curve” metaphor.  

The climate movement is nothing if not adaptable, it’s good at pivoting and we’ve seen that in the last few months with some organisations doing really great work engaging in discussions with politicians, public servants and changing the story in the media around a renewables-led recovery. But the push from Nev Power and the gas lobby for a “gas-led recovery” it definitely a challenge.