Why climate funding doesn’t reach the grassroots, and what needs to change

Every year sees new climate funds, billions pledged for adaptation, forests, resilience, and technology. How much of this money is reaching the people living with the daily realities of climate change?

In many of the communities I work with across Asia and the Pacific, the answer is often: very little, or not at all.

Global climate spending has grown to more than two trillion dollars a year, yet only a small fraction of philanthropic giving supports climate action, and an even smaller share reaches local actors directly. The problem is not only how little philanthropic funding reaches climate work, but also how that money moves.

The participation gap

In many cases across the climate finance ecosystem, major philanthropic institutions and implementing agencies, often based in the Global North, determine the priorities, frameworks, and funding flows, with very little input from the communities on the frontlines.

This top-down approach means that entire funding strategies can be built around assumptions of what counts as a valid intervention, what success looks like, and who is seen as capable of delivering it. Local actors are invited in late and asked to implement pre-designed projects rather than shape them. Even when participation is cited as a core principle, it is often symbolic.

Research on civil society financing suggests that less than one percent of development and climate funding reaches grassroots organisations in the global South directly, rather than via multiple intermediaries. Direct access tends to go to those who can provide audited multi-year accounts, navigate applications in fluent English, manage complex reporting portals, and satisfy stringent banking requirements. Many youth-led, women-led, or Indigenous groups cannot, especially when they are informal networks rather than registered entities.

In climate-vulnerable regions where I’ve worked, communities are not short on solutions. They are already restoring degraded ecosystems, adapting livelihoods, protecting water sources, and negotiating with local authorities. But they often lack the flexible resources to scale this work on their own terms. Funding is still largely delivered through project formats that leave little room for locally defined priorities or informal organising.

This is not only an administrative issue. It is a question of trust. Many communities I have worked with express deep scepticism about philanthropy, especially when offers of support arrive with a long list of conditions or sudden deadlines.

Why are the people closest to climate impacts continuing to be involved as implementers rather than agenda-setters? Who is deciding the priorities, the timelines, and the definition of success?

Design matters more than scale

Philanthropy is more and more being asked to fill gaps left by governments and multilateral funding. While this is understandable, without considering the systems at work, it can also reinforce the status quo.

A top-down design also slows delivery. Each new intermediary adds a layer of due diligence, reporting, and risk aversion. Funds may move on paper, but they do not necessarily move into the hands of those facing immediate climate threats. The friction in the system is borne not by philanthropies, but by community organisers who spend more time filling out forms than meeting with the people they serve.

These structural imbalances have led to growing calls for new models that move money differently, shift power, and trust communities to define their own priorities.

A different lens

A growing number of practitioners are experimenting with models that start from a different premise: money should follow the leadership of those closest to the problem. Participatory grantmaking; regranting through trusted local intermediaries; and direct, unconditional cash transfers are all part of this shift.

Youth microgrant schemes that I have helped coordinate allow young organisers to direct small but flexible funds toward what matters locally, often infrastructural or relational work that rarely fits traditional grant categories. These seemingly small investments often unlocked much larger forms of collective power, precisely because young people chose for themselves what mattered most.

The Unconditional Cash for Climate Justice pilot in Tuvalu, which I co-coordinate, takes this logic further. Rather than funding a project, the scheme provides regular, no-strings-attached cash transfers to frontline climate defenders. The premise is simple: individuals know best what they need in order to continue their work, whether that is covering school fees, investing in small livelihoods, or paying for transport to meetings with government officials. The role of philanthropy is to enable autonomy.

This approach is now expanding through the Cash for Conservation (CfC) movement, which brings together over 50 organisations working to redirect climate finance straight to the hands of those protecting forests, watersheds, and biodiverse landscapes. Early pilots, such as Cool Earth’s basic income pilot in Peru, show promising trends, from improved nutrition and income stability to increased participation in reforestation. Unlike conditional incentives like PES, CfC embraces autonomy, grounding conservation in justice, care, and material support.

Evidence from other regions supports this approach. Studies from the Sahel, Togo, and elsewhere suggest that multi-year cash transfers help households build savings, protect productive assets, and maintain food consumption when droughts or floods hit. In other words, cash can help communities do more than simply survive a shock. It can help them bounce forward into a future where they have more assets and more room to act.

The global infrastructure to deliver such programmes already exists, but what’s needed now is bold investment from philanthropy to scale these models, generate further evidence, and finally deliver conservation finance to the people doing the protecting.

Climate philanthropy now faces a choice. It can continue announcing new pledges each year while maintaining the status quo, or it can reshape who holds decision-making power.

If philanthropy wants to move from intent to impact, the question is no longer only ‘how much can we give’. It is ‘how much power are we willing to share’.

The answer will determine whether philanthropy remains a small, cautious player in a $2 trillion climate finance landscape, or whether it becomes a catalyst for genuine climate justice.

Zainab Bie is the Director of Asia Pacific at Equal Right and co-creator of the ImpactShip Newsletter.

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