Foundations as sustainability partners: climate philanthropy finance flows in China

ABSTRACT

Despite substantial efforts being made through public and private sources, funding for climate change mitigation falls far short of what is needed. Meanwhile, philanthropic sources have begun to emerge as important sustainability partners by connecting multiple sectors and guiding funding flows. This study provides a comprehensive overview of climate-related philanthropic foundation financing and funding in China. Using a classification framework for climate change initiatives through co-word analysis and text segmentation techniques, we conduct visualization analysis to depict the changing pattern of climate philanthropy in China by analyzing donors, subfields, and flow of funds between 2008 and 2019. We conclude by providing suggestions for funders, charities, and policymakers seeking to enhance the value of collaborative governance in addressing climate change.

Key policy insights

• Philanthropic sources play a key role in climate change mitigation in the new mixed-actor model of climate governance in China.

• Climate philanthropy in China is inseparable from strong political connections and policy influence of the government.

• Policymakers worldwide need to pay attention to flows and gaps in philanthropic funding as part of climate finance monitoring and to stimulate data-driven decisions concerning future investments.

• Policymakers need to leverage the crucial role of philanthropy in connecting multiple sectors to strengthen the climate change mitigation ecosystem.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate finance
• philanthropic foundations
• classification framework
• visualization
• co-word analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the support provided by Editor Jan Corfee-Morlot, Joanna Depledge, and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive advice. The authors are indebted to Donal Crilly for the support provided in preparing the manuscript. The authors also wish to acknowledge comments and advice from Yukun Feng, Hongyu Han, Bo Liu, Xuejiao Niu, Quande Qin, Fangyi Yang, Ruiying Zhang, and Weiting Zheng.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Blended finance refers to ‘public funds pooled with private funds, largely under private fund management, directed variously at development and environmental goals’ (Bracking & Leffel, 2021, p. 6).

2 Philanthropic funding for climate action between 2017 and 2020 in recent years in China is from three main sources: international and local philanthropic foundations, and official development assistance (ClimateWorks Foundation, 2022). Although international donors accounted for the largest contribution compared to the other two sources, we focus on local philanthropic foundations in this study due to their institutional newness and the data availability.

3 Overall, 80 to 85% of philanthropic foundations in China are self-operated and run grants by themselves, while the remaining foundations fund other organizations.

4 Energy efficiency here refers to energy conservation of buildings, and that of household appliances or equipment in the buildings, whereas energy saving is primarily focused on other industries (also in Figures A1 and A2, Appendix A). We are grateful for one of our interviewees for differentiating these two clusters.

5 The total expenditure and revenue of all operated projects are disclosed in the annual reports of foundations. They refer to the associated costs of using equipment and materials, insurance benefits for volunteers, and other administrative expenses, as well as donations and government subsidy for the reporting year. The currency units in the following text, unless specified, are all in United States dollars (USD).

6 The bottom three industries are education ($0.03 million, 0.01%), accommodation and catering ($0.04 million, 0.01%), and culture, sports, and entertainment ($1.31 million, 0.35%).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Young Scholar Start-up Grant, Shenzhen University and the Shenzhen Humanities & Social Sciences Key Research Bases.