Decoding the relationship between philanthropy and climate change

Climate change means various things to various people. When you say climate change, nobody really understands the core issues, so the focus is on air pollution in urban cities, water quality access to water in rural areas, deforestation, solid waste management, clean energy transition, micro plastics in our food chain, plastics in the oceans, etc.  It is important to make people understand what climate change really means, otherwise it's always somebody else 's problem…

AIP does not directly engage with any cause.  Our mission is to see personal philanthropy aid India 's transformation.  Our whole focus is to catalyse and evangelize for personal philanthropy as we find that it can make a difference. There are some shining examples of personal philanthropy in many sectors where it has made a big difference.  AIP informs, influences, inspires by creating knowledge products in various sectors to help in decision making. Whatever is the passion of the philanthropist and whatever area they are interested in, we are happy to work with them because we believe that in India almost every cause need funding whether it's education, health care, climate, livelihoods, poverty eradication, gender, or areas like arts and culture.

Can you give us a few examples of philanthropists who have done remarkably well and who have engaged people with them.

I will be remiss if I do not mention that The Convergence Foundation of Ashish Dhawan has done yeoman work in many, many areas like education, pollution, gender equality, and sports promotion. There is also this climate focused organization called A-PAG or Air Pollution Action Group.  There are many others like Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, The Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives, the Mariwala Health Initiatives, the ATE Chandra Foundation among others which have done great work.

How do you manage funding requirements for the various programmes?

We don't run the programmes ourselves but work with philanthropists across sectors.  We are seeing a lot of philanthropic capital now in India and increasing foreign capital, of course, has always been one component of funding for Indian grassroots organizations and that continues to be the case. Even though the rules regarding foreign funding have been changed slightly in the recent past, but foreign funding continues to be strong for the right organizations and for the right causes.

When you talk about livelihood, are they looking at specific areas, helping certain communities or are they working to help train people?  

There are various initiatives like Fabindia, a social enterprise which is helping to create a sustainable model of social impact by ensuring that traditional arts and crafts thrive and they find an outlet to create products that are marketable. There are of course organisations like Parivartan, which work on the skilling models that exist. Then there is Takshila Educational Society, Arthshila, run by Sanjiv Kumar and Setika Singh, which is working in Bihar. They have a holistic development model, which is also anchored around preserving traditional arts and crafts. There is Rekhta Foundation of Sanjiv Saraf, which trying to preserve poetry and ghazals and writings in Urdu. This is as far as the arts and crafts are concerned. There are a whole set of bigger initiatives around skilling in which numerous organizations are involved.

When it comes to climate change, the farmers and fisher folk are being majorly hit. How are you helping there?

There are a lot of initiatives in being undertaken to help the farming community.   Amit Chandra's foundation, for example, is doing a lot of work in Maharashtra on water conservation, traditional methods of water storage, rejuvenating those places and many other areas of water. The Parivartan Foundation of Sanjiv Kumar and Setika Singh are doing a lot of work with rural communities in Bihar to ensure that their incomes go up right and that the impact of climate change is reduced. There are similarly many other inspiring initiatives, some of them are tackling the problem from a resource angle, some of them are tackling the problem from the farming and livelihood angle, some of them are tackling the problem from the perspective of helping farmers find jobs but within the local communities so that they don't have to migrate to towns.  There are different perspectives that are being used by different philanthropists through their foundations or through other organisations which are already working in these areas.

Basically, your organisation gives them help in the form of advice or you do contribute financially also?

We are like an exchange. We don't provide any direct funding, nor do we receive any direct funding. Our model is that we work with the philanthropists, the people who make the grants. We work with them. We also have a fairly good idea of the organization that are working in these various areas. We have a list of almost 800 non-profit organizations that are doing good work across various sectors and geographic areas, across methods. And if a philanthropist has an interest in a particular area, then we make the connection.

Does more than one organisation work on a project or they work separately?

What happens is that there are many causes, many grassroots organizations or non-profit organizations who receive support from multiple sources. They may receive some CSR funding, they may receive some personal philanthropic money, and that is almost never restricted to one person. Unless the foundation has been started by someone individually in his or her individual capacity, then of course the majority funding in that foundation comes from propounding philanthropist. Which is often the case.