By Tanya Kak – Portfolio Lead, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies
Farmers for Forests, a Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP) partner, is working on a mission to increase and protect India’s biodiverse forest cover, while also working on farmers’ livelihoods using a payment for ecosystem services model. While their entry point was forest protection, their community members often asked them, “Aren’t you here to help? Then why aren’t you helping us with our houses and fields being destroyed by elephants and getting better prices for our agricultural and forest produce?” However, the community’s demands quickly helped them understand that working for conservation and climate change is intrinsically linked to the daily livelihood challenges these communities face.
At RNP, our funding approach adopts a holistic lens to deal with the twin challenges of conservation and climate change, while supporting the livelihoods of those most affected. In the initial years, our curiosity led us to expand from the conservation of individual species to looking at wider ecosystems and habitats. At the same time, the reality of climate change meant a certain urgency was attached to addressing these challenges with speed and at scale.
While philanthropic capital can be catalytic and fund riskier innovations, it has allowed us to take a long-term perspective to invest in building resilient networks, local capacities of communities, and facilitating systemic transformation. For example, while India is one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries, many species are threatened, and land degradation continues to be a challenge. We have also seen multiple small and independent organisations carrying out valuable restoration work and amassing a wealth of experience. In order to make these rich insights accessible beyond the fragmented silos in which they exist, and to create a community of practice that is able to leverage and action this information readily, Rainmatter Foundation and RNP supported the emergence of a platform called Ecological Restoration Alliance (ERA), India. ERA partners are a group of organisations and individuals who have directly engaged in the practice of ecological restoration and generating knowledge about ecosystem restoration. Currently, they operate in 24 states, have over 350 individual members, and 8 institutional partners. From coastal ecosystems to high-altitude mountainous terrains, the alliance’s biggest strength lies in the diversity of practice, the expertise, and the varied landscapes that its members operate in. ERA
has moved from just being a network to a movement that addresses hyper-local restoration challenges while enabling replication and scale through local innovations and peer networks.
This example showcases how philanthropy can support ecosystem-building efforts. We have also found the following levers to be useful in our funding journey:
Multi-year, unrestricted grants: Climate change is a series of compounding risks that will be felt globally as a social and economic reality. Philanthropic efforts need to mirror these concerns by balancing a sense of urgency with the patience and flexibility that is required to affect such long-term changes. With this in mind, the majority of the grants at RNP are multi-year, unrestricted grants that allow us to act as co-learning partners to our grantees. In a survey that we recently concluded with 90+ partners across our different focus areas, almost all of them highlighted how the unrestricted grants have given them the freedom to experiment and innovate with new solutions, provided the cushion to respond to regular organisational challenges, and be agile enough to adapt to future needs, and make new pivots. One of our partners, WELL Labs, highlighted, “The unrestricted support gives us the freedom to experiment; it allowed us to raise 3X the amount of program funding than the previous year”.
Rethinking traditional methods of doing monitoring and evaluation: As we have learned from giving
unrestricted grants, the impact can be a spectrum of tangible outcomes such as collaboration, enhanced reach and scale and intangible behavioural change such as feeling empowered, living with dignity etc. Being tied to traditional notions of evaluating progress on key performance indicators or rigid project metrics can be limiting. Instead, funders can help by focusing on building the resilience of their partners and adopting a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to look at progress.
Supporting networks and platforms that leverage collective wisdom: The climate crisis affects everyone globally, and hence, cannot be solved by one individual or organisation in isolation. While targeted interventions are important, a network that brings different actors together to build and sustain vast, reciprocal connections that enforce mutual growth and leverage collective wisdom is crucial. For example, in 2020, Tata Trusts, McArthur Foundation, Edelgive Foundation, and Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies came together to build a first-ofits-kind climate philanthropy collaborative, India Climate Collaborative (ICC). Building bridges between a diverse set of actors – governments, philanthropies, businesses, civil society organisations, and research institutions, the ICC helped to mobilise domestic funds, scale impactful solutions, and facilitate collaboration across the ecosystem to enable climate action. Given all of these efforts, domestic donors are emerging in the Indian context to catalyse climate action; India has witnessed a 2.2X increase in total philanthropic capital towards climate-related action in the period between 2018-2023.
India faces the challenge of having to respond to climate change while balancing its developmental needs. Philanthropy has the opportunity to root India’s climate story in both – equity and efficacy. Its unique ability to hedge risks, support innovations, and pave the way for other funding makes it well-suited to take on this mandate.
