Self-Sabotage: Climate Philanthropy’s Mistrust of Communities of Color Must End Now

The centrality of racial and economic justice to the Biden administration’s climate agenda and to vital policy platforms like the Green New Deal represent a profound shift in the direction of climate policy and activism. The shift has largely occurred despite concerted efforts by much of climate philanthropy to stifle or to neglect the participation of Indigenous communities and communities of color. Unless a long era of climate philanthropy apartheid comes to an end, the prospects for climate policy success are grim.

Climate change is nothing if not an issue of justice. Within the U.S., poverty and racism are key drivers of who gets to pollute where and when, and who benefits from the fossil fuel economy. Climate change is an international injustice because the disproportionate share of the problem is caused by wealthier nations (the U.S. alone, with 6% of the world’s population, is the source of 25% of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions). Climate change is an intergenerational injustice because of the planetary crises we are passing forward to our children. And finally, it is an inter-species injustice because of the mass extinctions and disruption it is wreaking on the natural world.

A willful blindness to the centrality of justice has crippled progress on climate for decades. For more than 20 years, lack of support from low-income communities and communities of color—the most reliable of green voters—has been regularly sinking climate and clean energy ballot initiatives in states like California, Washington, Massachusetts and Illinois. Environmental justice communities were given the only statutory advisory role in California’s groundbreaking Global Warming Solutions Act (2006). Philanthropy’s paltry support of capacity for that role has scarred legislative efforts in California and well beyond ever since. The stench of this exclusion fractured progressive support for major federal climate legislation in 2009 and contributed to a drought in national policy ever since.

Neglect is too gentle a word to use for philanthropy that was understood by grassroots organizations as innately hostile or blind to their perspectives. Leaders across the climate justice movement describe how crucial funding would dry up just as critical policy fights were ramping up. Some describe having their funding cut off and the work they had designed handed to predominantly white groups who were “trusted” to execute on them. Many funders to this day dismiss the perspectives of communities of color, seeing them as “distractions” to the kind of industrial, agricultural and economic policies needed to stop climate change.

Philanthropic racism on climate is morally indefensible, but it is also nothing short of sabotage for the climate movement as a whole. Here are some key reasons why:

Voters of color are the bedrock of electoral support for climate policy

This is not a generic polling insight but a material political fact. Voters of color are the base electorate for legislators at almost all levels of government who have made or will one day make up a winning majority for climate legislation. Voters of color are also consistently the most environmental voters, so it has been the height of philanthropic incompetence not to cement and build on this reality.

Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities are likely to face the greatest risks and the greatest benefits from the transition away from fossil fuels

In the U.S. alone, decarbonization means that between $2 and $4 trillion a year will be spent differently than it is today. Clean energy jobs are the fastest-growing source of employment, but African Americans and other people of color lag in their participation in this sector, compared to dirty energy jobs. And so far, clean energy jobs pay less, a problem that will have to be solved before we can expect ironclad labor support for deep transformation.

In 2006, “A Million Solar Roofs” was an initiative to kickstart the solar industry in California, but the strongly regressive way that panels were paid for (subsidizing new homes with charges on existing utility customers) has been an anchor of efforts to sink similar programs in Michigan, Florida, Texas and many other states. While there is no question that a clean energy economy will be better for BIPOC communities, the leaders of the dinosaur economy will continue to do their best to sow doubt and to inflict pain through the transition in the hopes of slowing if not reversing progress.

The scale of political change at almost every level requires broad-based coalitions

Climate policy is housing and land use policy that will upend the racialized way land use is managed today. It is transportation policy that will fundamentally transform driving (and driving jobs), mass transit and vehicle ownership.

Vast amounts of capital are tied up in fossil fuel facilities and reserves that have to be phased out, and in places and infrastructure that will soon be underwater. The IPCC estimated that this century would see well over 200 million climate refugees, and that was before its estimates of flooding globally ticked up by more than 300% in a 2019 analysis. Carbon removal and geoengineering at planetary scale have moved from the lunatic fringe to being safety valves against the likelihood of runaway planetary disruption. Change at these scales requires the broadest possible buy-in by everyday people, and as the last few years have amply demonstrated, racism is an express ticket to political mayhem.

The change we need

Recent surveys indicate that less than 1.4% of all climate philanthropy has been directed to climate policy work for and by communities of color, but there are signs that change is afoot.

Philanthropic initiatives like Building Equity and Alignment (BEA Fund), the Solutions Project, the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund and the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice are moving millions into the field. Some newer donors are raising the bar for how central climate justice must be to philanthropic strategies; other new entrants too often are guided by “elder” advisors in the field who got us into this mess to begin with.

We must, once and for all, put an end to the racism that has misguided climate philanthropy for so long. Some ideas about how:

Fund justice, not climate

Fixing climate change means moving quickly to put our economy and our communities back in balance with nature. Economic change, industrial change and social change are all on the table, but they are more deeply intertwined with how we choose to live together than they are with scientific or technical insights. Diversity in green jobs, for example, is more dependent on repealing anti-affirmative action statutes than it is on the size of economic stimulus. Philanthropy that doesn’t prioritize justice and social sustainability in these transitions is money wasted.

Scale power and expertise in BIPOC communities

As mentioned above (and demonstrated in every election cycle that has resulted in climate-friendly leadership), people of color are already the decisive electors. Climate funding should encourage the explicit use of that franchise for climate victories, and most importantly, scale broad policy leadership indigenous to those communities. Climate policy has major impacts, for better and for worse, on toxic hotspots, but it has even more fundamental implications for how communities of color will find jobs and pay their energy bills in the very near future.

Be accountable

Make no mistake—climate philanthropy didn’t stumble into this predicament. Through ignorance and privilege, it designed it. Daylight is the best disinfectant, and philanthropies need to be transparent and accountable about how much of their money is going to the communities most vital to the solutions. Funders should heed the call of the Climate Funders Justice Pledge, recently launched by the Donors of Color Network. Doing so means disclosing what percent of their climate funding has gone to organizations whose boards and staffs are more than 50% BIPOC.

Kill cap and trade

Any climate policy that grandfathers polluter rights represents a massive, additional subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. Cap and trade implies that polluters have a right to a surplus of permits to swap around. Too much philanthropic funding has already been wasted on this misguided effort to secure industry buy-in with more injustice. We’ve always known this: Polluters must pay for their emissions until their emissions dwindle to zero. No muss, no fuss. Cap and trade is an outdated framework whose time is long past and whose embedded injustice is no longer acceptable.

Fund a just transition

Great climate policy means great transition, and most of it will lead to healthier, more vibrant communities and economies. Without large-scale funding to plan and manage this transition, opponents of climate policy will be able to exploit it to sow doubt and division and to inflict real suffering on frontline workers and communities. Climate funders must, at a minimum, emulate conservative ones in stable funding for long-term change, because the just transition is a long game. If we get it wrong, transition pains will lead to backlash and reversal of critical climate policies.

Toward a Green, Just New Deal

We are in a moment of great promise for the idea of justice, but historically, when these moments fail to include the power of BIPOC communities, they can make things worse. Roosevelt’s New Deal was voted out of Congress only with the crucial support of Dixiecrats, secured through commitments to preserve white supremacy. When Truman later sought a vast expansion of public housing, opponents tacked on anti-discrimination provisions to tank the legislation. Housing that was good and fair was a bridge too far, and Congress kicked off a post-war economic boom that largely bypassed communities of color as a result. The fabric of the original New Deal was woven with racist political accommodation and has been foundational to the emergence of the New Jim Crow.

Today, the Green New Deal and the Thrive Agenda promise an industrial, social and economic program of potentially even greater scale, and one that is explicit in raising up the centrality of justice to solving the climate crisis. Unless climate philanthropy fundamentally retools to build participation and power in BIPOC communities, it’s hard to see how we assemble the political coalitions needed to win a Green New Deal. Even more crucially, if the systematic exclusion of BIPOC communities in climate policymaking continues, any New Deal could lay the foundation for even more generations of injustice.

The time has come to break the generational cycle of social and environmental destruction. Can philanthropic institutions, many of which last year denounced systemic racism, reform their views on climate and help build the way?

Dr. Michel Gelobter is co-founder of the Green Leadership Trust, a coalition of the BIPOC board members of US environmental NGOs. He has worked on climate change and environmental justice policy and legislation at the municipal, state and federal level since the mid-1980s, convened some of the earliest gatherings on climate justice in the mid-1990s, and co-authored the first reports on people of color and climate change in the mid-2000s. He is the author of The Soul of Environmentalism and Lean Startups for Social Change.

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