Co-sponsors: Ariadne, EDGE Funders Alliance, Human Rights Funders Network, International Education Funders Group, Northern California Grantmakers, Philanthropy New York, and Solidaire Network.

The CLIMA Fund organized a four-part series, Not If, But How, unpacking the climate crisis and how to reach grassroots solutions, grounded in the wisdom and leadership of grassroots movements across the Global South.

Not If, But How was designed for funders and donors across sectors who are ready to deepen their understanding of climate and where to start in funding effective solutions. We heard from climate justice leaders from around the world and peer funders to explore what it takes to align our funding practices with the scale and urgency of the moment.

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Session 1: Not If, But How: Climate Changes Everything

Jan 27, 2026

Speakers:

1. Poonam Joshi, Funders Initiative for Civil Society
2. Rajiv Khanna, Thousand Currents
3. Otibho Obianwu, Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism
4. Noelene Nabulivou, Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality

Speakers set the table for our collective learning. We grounded in the reality that the climate crisis is inseparable from other global challenges of health, education, and democratic erosion. We explored how climate change is a systemic crisis rooted in power—shaped by who benefits, who bears harm, and who gets to decide. And how systemic problems require systemic solutions. Our speakers surfaced how grassroots movements “multi-solve,” addressing climate, livelihoods, land, gender, and democracy together.

Here are some takeaways from the call:

1. Poonam shared that we are in a prolonged era of rupture directly shaped by the post–Cold War “end of history” optimism that privileged market liberalism while underinvesting in social and economic justice. Institutional responses to warning signs have largely focused on surface fixes and minor course corrections, rather than confronting structural economic and power imbalances.
2. Poonam also highlighted the brittle nature of autocratic regimes and noted that movement groups are the strongest defense against rising authoritarianism. “The solutions will not come from the political system. Movements are uniquely positioned to do things that even allies in government and business cannot do. They can use their bodies and collective resistance to challenge the system, pressure decision-makers, and expand rights protections.” 
3. Rajiv highlighted that social movements have been at the forefront of civil rights, gender justice, labor, and environmental protection. Movements have improved people’s daily lives while driving large-scale systemic change. Rajiv warned that while governments and markets are often the focus, civil society and movements remain a critical, often overlooked, force for meaningful change.
4. Addressing the question of scale in movement-building, Noelene shared how what began as a classroom exercise for law students at the University of the South Pacific became a catalyst for a new international standard on states’ obligations regarding climate change. Students initially explored whether a climate case could be brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From there, they collaborated with climate activists, technical experts, scientists, and Indigenous leaders to build a robust, evidence-based case for state responsibility amid the escalating climate crisis. By convening Pacific governments into a coalition strong enough to move the UN General Assembly and the ICJ, the campaign wove together legal strategy, storytelling, and movement organizing to ensure broad participation and global visibility. This ecosystem of actors ultimately helped shift global jurisprudence on climate change and human rights—demonstrating the outsized impact that frontline-led, accountable groups can have.
5. Noelene also emphasized that the work of climate justice movements is rooted in lived realities, colonial histories, and deeply uneven state capacity. As a result, movement strategy is necessarily grounded locally, in the needs of communities. Their flexibility and power come from the fact that movements are, at their core, expressions of people’s needs rather than abstract policy agendas.
6. Otibho shared that philanthropy’s reliance on rigid logic models often distorts movement work to fit predefined measures of success. This not only constrains how movements can show up, but also stifles the sector’s imagination and limits our understanding of how change actually happens—and who is capable of driving it.

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Session 2: Beyond Band-Aids: From Technical Fixes to Systemic Transformation

Feb 3, 2026

Speakers:

1. Mariama Sonko, Nous Sommes la Solution (We are the Solution)
2. Zanele Sibanda, Thousand Currents
3. Ole Kaunga, IMPACT (Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict Transformation)
4. B de Gersigny, Global Greengrants Fund

Speakers unpacked how movements multi-solve, growing from the needs of communities and spreading across ecologies and political boundaries.

Here are some takeaways from the call:

1. Mariama shared how women farmers across West Africa are practicing agroecology; managing ecosystems through inherited, ancestral know-how; and preserving biodiversity. Despite producing 70% of Africa’s food, women farmers have historically lacked recognition, empowerment, and basic rights such as land ownership. The 115,000-strong women’s movement supports family farms, creates spaces for experimentation, and trains youth in agroecology. 
2. When discussing women as drivers of climate justice solutions, such as agroecology, Mariama highlighted that “agroecology has helped women reoccupy their rightful place in society.” Women farmers have built collective power and resilience to climate shocks by reclaiming and valuing peasant seeds as a shared community good.
3. Zanele highlighted that agroecology transforms the individual, the family, the farm, and the ecosystem, while agroecological movements influence policy at the national and regional levels. She reflected how scale is not just breadth of membership and geography (We Are the Solution works across nine countries), but also about depth of relationship, durable community buy-in, and decision-making power. 
4. Ole from Impact Kenya highlighted that the disparate impacts of the climate crisis across all areas of life, including health, education, and civic participation, make the work of movements essential. B shared that while “nature-based solutions” and carbon markets can sound appealing, movements have long challenged such ‘band-aid’ approaches that mask deeper structural problems. Framing carbon offsets as a path to net zero often reproduces green colonialism, allowing those historically responsible for emissions in the Global North to shift responsibility to communities in the Global South rather than reducing emissions at the source.
5. Evidence from Kenya shows that lands governed by local communities and pastoralists sequester more carbon and sustain ecosystems far better than restrictive conservancies, while also protecting livelihoods and culture. As they are currently structured, carbon markets concentrate power amongst wealthy developers and require local communities to sign away their rights. Carbon markets risk creating green colonial dynamics in the absence of strong legal frameworks, including mandatory community input.

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Session 3: Power from the Ground Up: Movements Leading the Way

Feb 10, 2026

Speakers:

1. Nadine Nembhard, World Forum of Fisher Peoples
2. Sargylana Kondakova, Free Yakutia Foundation
3. Sara Mersha, Grassroots International
4. Mitzi Tan, Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines
5. Nathan Méténier, Youth Climate Justice Fund

Speakers highlighted how grassroots movements create policy, ecological, and cultural impact in their contexts. 

Here are some takeaways from the call:

1. Nadine shared how movements respond directly to community needs: “We know what sustains a healthy ecosystem and what truly supports our communities. Instead of policies that are imposed on us and ocean-grabbing industrial blue economy models that fail us, we must lead our own work and shape the future of our fishing communities ourselves.” The aquaecology model championed by fishers reflects their commitment to community-led stewardship grounded in rights and local knowledge.
2. Nadine also reflected on the importance of cross-sectoral movement networks and collective action for creating durable change. “We are a movement of fisher people globally, and we cannot work in isolation. We work at the global level with other global movements because we cannot do it alone, and we cannot do it with just one movement. We have created convergence with farmers, pastoralists, Indigenous peoples, and grassroots feminist movements, and we find that convergence is super important for advocacy work and policy change. Movements have been able to strategically use both inside strategies – engaging policy decision-making spaces from the national to the international level – and also [outside strategies], saying…we’re going to do things ourselves. That’s where real power is being built.”
3. Sargylana shared that there is no distinction between climate action and human rights work led by Indigenous and grassroots movements. “In the context of the movements, the climate crisis, authoritarianism, war, public health, migration, and economic instability do not exist in isolation, but form a single interconnected system.”
4. Sargylana added that many funders’ work is already being impacted by the climate crisis, even if their strategies do not reflect this. For instance, health funders see the impacts of the climate crisis in rising disease rates and collapsing infrastructure, education funders see disrupted schooling and forced displacement, and security and humanitarian funders see conflict, militarization, and refugee flows. “Climate enters these sectors through different doors. Grassroots movements, thus, matter precisely because they are on the frontlines and act as an early warning mechanism. Supporting movements is crucial to preventing crises, not just managing the consequences. Grassroots movements are often the only holders of alternative knowledge, public trust, and real connection to communities on the ground. So, without movements, humanitarian or climate programs risk being detached from reality and ultimately being ineffective.”
5. Mitzi highlighted that movement-building nurtures and sustains a culture of care. She shared that while youth may be mobilized by global threats, youth movements identify local needs and organize based on the contexts in which they operate. A culture of care and attention to local context helps ensure that movements are accountable to communities.
6. “When you build movements and bring people together, you keep winning campaigns. It’s not just one win, and then people burn out and disappear. It’s a process where people grow, regenerate, and new leaders keep coming in.” Mitzi shared how movements invest in leadership and capacity, remaining durable and creating resilient power. “Building movements means ensuring that more people from the next generation can step forward, so the work continues and no one has to carry it alone.”

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Session 4: Reimagining Philanthropy: Building a Just Climate Future Together

Feb 17, 2026

Speakers:

1. Ivana Fertziger, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies
2. Nikhil Wilmink, Open Society Foundations
3. Laura Garcia, Global Greengrants Fund
4. Kate Kroeger, Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism

Speakers shared how they evolved their grantmaking to integrate climate and systemic change approaches. 

Here are some takeaways from the call:

1. Nikhil highlighted the need for core, flexible support, noting that OSF has “made general support grants central to its strategy because, in times of volatility, organizations cannot survive on two-year treadmills of project-based funding. If we are funding the same organization multiple times, we should extend the timeframe and make it a four- or five-year grant. Long-term, trust-based funding allows honest conversations about risks and challenges in ways that project-based funding does not. Longer-term funding recognizes and addresses the moment we are in.”
2. Laura added that “As civic space shrinks, grantee organizations cannot adapt to threats and respond to political curveballs with rigid, project-based grants.” Kate also named that “the very existence of rapid response funds is evidence that most funders are not providing the long-term, flexible support movements actually need. If we expect systemic change to last, we must offer core, multi-year funding and build relationships where grantees can come to us in their most vulnerable moments without fear of penalty.”
3. Ivana shared that “Indigenous-led funds are by and for the movements they serve, with clear alignment around land stewardship, natural resource management, and cultural survival. Indigenous Peoples receive less than one percent of global philanthropic funding, and when resources do reach them, they often lack decision-making power over how those funds are managed. If we are serious about biodiversity, climate, and systemic change, we need to resource the ecosystem of Indigenous-led funds directly and at scale, through networks, not by cherry-picking a few winners.”
4. Ivana highlighted that strong territorial governance systems are inclusive and representative of the communities they serve. “We have seen that when young people and women occupy leadership spaces, and when youth see a future in their territories, governance is stronger and climate and conservation outcomes are more just and durable. If we want equitable territorial and climate solutions, we must resource governance systems that open pathways to youth and diverse leadership.”
5. Kate shared that one of the core challenges in bridging within the climate space is to keep the frame wide enough to include experimental, intersectional work while remaining clear in purpose. “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle; democracy, defense of land, bodily autonomy, and environmental defense are intertwined, and our funding must reflect that reality. We need to resource open-ended, regenerative work and be willing partners in learning, so philanthropy moves beyond survival strategies toward an affirmative vision of collective flourishing.”
6. Nikhil highlighted that the answers are at the margins. “At the margins, where the climate crisis hits first, movement groups are integrating climate justice into their work because it is fundamental to the change they want to create. In this moment of funding cuts and closing civic space, we need to make the boundaries between organizations more porous. We have to move to funding movements because you are less vulnerable when you are networked.”