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Photo credit: BOMA Project
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Dear Colleagues:
2020 has been a formidable year. Despite the many challenges, CJRF and our grantee partners have made significant strides, from record attendance at important gatherings, to breaking ground on new initiatives, to building momentum in the climate funding community for progress toward equity and justice.
A hallmark of the year has been curtailed travel, which has forced CJRF to communicate and convene in new ways. While we miss seeing partners and their work in person, moving activities online has allowed us to increase participation in important conversations, bringing together colleagues across five continents. Over the last few months, we’ve kicked off a webinar series to learn from our grantmaking and build community around the value of locally led efforts for justice and resilience. Learn more about those efforts below.
CJRF and many of our partners also participated in the first-ever virtual conference on community-based adaptation to climate change. We discussed what we’re learning about bringing a climate justice spirit to climate adaptation and how to put those lessons into action. More on that below as well.
In this newsletter, we also feature grantee partner Women’s Climate Centers International. They have broken ground on a new model for a local climate resource center where women can collaborate on building resilient communities.
Finally, we’re excited to welcome the Robert Bosch Foundation as CJRF’s third funding partner. We look forward to working with this like-minded organization to level-up our learning and knowledge sharing.
As we reflect on the year from our homes in Washington DC, we must also recognize how divisive the U.S. election season has been. Within the month, a new administration will take over, and climate change promises to once again be a top priority for the United States. But the divisions in this country remain stark. We believe that grassroots movements have the power to bring people together and build hope.
As we close out this year and look forward to the next, we are optimistic that 2021 will bring an even greater opportunity to uplift the voices of those most directly affected by climate change and drive global transformation from the ground up.
Cheers,
Heather and Hilary
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Virtual Convenings to Promote Climate Justice
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We want to say a special thank you to all who attended our last two webinars: Urgency and Intersectionality in Climate Action: A Cartoon-a-thon Webinar and Shifting Society for an Equitable, Climate-safe Future. These webinars, organized with our Council of Advisors, created a new space for discussion and reflection, and allowed CJRF to share what we’re learning from our grantmaking.
During November’s cartoon-a-thon, we tried a novel format for facilitating conversations: as attendees discussed the importance and value of intersectionality, several cartoonists illustrated what they were hearing. The results were compelling. See one example below.
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More engagement with this and the rest of the thought-provoking cartoons from the cartoon-a-thon will be encouraged in the coming months. We are also collaborating with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre to create opportunities to continue the conversation on intersectionality – look for more on this in early 2021.
Earlier this month, we hosted a webinar exploring the theme of transformational change. With input from several panelists and takeaways from our participant breakout groups, we compiled five critical recommendations for researchers, funders, and practitioners to better support grassroots efforts to change systems at the local, national, and global levels.
Our next webinar, Lessons from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund: A Discussion of Mid-term Review Findings is January 28 at 9 am Eastern Time. We will discuss the findings from an independent review of CJRF’s first three years and gather input on where to go from here. Registration for this event is now closed.
Stay tuned for exciting news on our 2021 event series!
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Climate Justice in Action at #CBA14
More than 500 people from 70 countries were able to join the Community-Based Adaption Conference (#CBA14) this year—a record-breaking attendance made possible by bringing the event online. The conference brought together practitioners, grassroots representatives, policy makers, and donors for interactive discussions, workshops, and networking.
In addition to co-sponsoring the conference, CJRF held a side event where 30 people from our partner organizations discussed climate justice approaches to adaptation and shared their work and experience. From the rich and wide-ranging conversation, we distilled six lessons you can read on our website.
CJRF grantee partner Youth Climate Lab also hosted an informative session on sparking transformative climate action through meaningful partnerships. At this session, Youth Climate Lab learned that while organizations are being intentional about collaboration, especially in response to the pandemic and the movement for Black lives, many feel the urgency behind this work inhibits true relationship building. Their hope is that the tool discussed during this session—Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem—helps to explore the mindsets we bring to partnership as we grow towards just, climate-resilient futures.
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Space for East African Women to Lead Solutions
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COVID-19 has disrupted our plans and those of our partners, but Women’s Climate Centers International (WCCI) has found ways to press forward with their ground-breaking work.
WCCI is a network of organizations committed to creating spaces where women can collaborate on solving their communities’ climate challenges. In the eastern Ugandan town of Tororo, the network broke ground on its first community hub, where women will come together to build and share resilience practices like bio-intensive farming techniques and improved water resource management.
Comfort Makasa, WCCI’s lead administrator and founder of Uganda Women’s Water Initiative (UWWI), sees the center as an “opportunity to tap into low-cost indigenous climate solutions.”
“A physical space fosters community participation in climate solutions thus fostering ownership,” Makasa added. “The end goal for WCCI is to create a one-stop climate solutions center for local, national, and international learning.”
You can learn more about WCCI’s efforts in Tororo Uganda in Climate Home News.
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Willkommen! The Robert Bosch Foundation partners with CJRF to advance climate justice and resilience. Under a two-year grant from the foundation, we're expanding our learning program, which is a critical component of CJRF’s mission. The Robert Bosch Foundation support will allow us to strengthen our own storytelling, as well as communication capacities of our grantees. The partnership also brings Ottilie Baelz and Atje Drexler onto the CJRF Review Board.
This year, CJRF became a founding member of the Climate Rights Funders Collaborative, which brings together six funders to make grants at the intersection of climate change and human rights. Under this collaborative, a sub-fund was created at the CJRF that, to date, has made eight $25,000 seed grants across the globe and facilitated a set of aligned grants to the Right Energy Partnership with Indigenous Peoples, totaling $585,000. This Climate Home article explains the seed grants, and reveals our hopes for the Collaborative’s future.
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In the News
Justice coalition develops resources for Covid-hit communities—Climate Home News: A legal empowerment network is training ‘barefoot lawyers’ to stand up for human rights amid the coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis.
Centre for women-led climate adaptation breaks ground in Uganda—Climate Home News: A community hub in Tororo, eastern Uganda, will provide an inclusive space for women to build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Climate change and human rights come together in new funder collaborative—Climate Home News: An experimental initiative makes grants to support communities on the front line of climate change and energy impacts in defending their human rights.
Open Society Foundations turns its attention to climate change, with a new justice-focused initiative—Inside Philanthropy (paywall): OSF has budgeted about $40 million for a new Climate Action Initiative focused on movement-building, economic justice, and advocacy and litigation.
Woman entrepreneurs fight Covid slump with new business ideas—Climate Home News: Kenyan women enrolled with the BOMA Project have turned to making face masks for income as livestock markets are shut down.
Arctic Indigenous network builds resilience to Covid, climate disruption—Climate Home News: Indigenous stewards in the Canadian Arctic have adapted their roles in response to the coronavirus pandemic, amplifying long-held traditions.
Could the pandemic drive more climate funding to grassroots organizations?—Devex: The inequalities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic are driving an increase in climate justice philanthropy.
Local must lead action to tackle world’s multiple interconnected challenges—IIED: Sam Greene distills key messages drawn from lively online dialogue with the 500+ participants from more than 70 countries who joined the 14th International Conference on Community-based Adaptation to climate change.
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