Can Philanthropy Fix Adaptation Finance? A $50 Million Fund Wants to Try

There’s a new climate fund in town — and it has some heavyweight backers. 

The US$50mn Adaptation and Resilience Fund (A&R Fund), launched on Tuesday, is the brainchild of not one, not two, but five philanthropic bodies, led by ClimateWorks Foundation.

It has big plans for building community resilience, particularly in the Global South. But it also shoulders great expectations. With rich countries cutting back on overseas climate aid, and private finance yet to scale up to meet even a fraction of needs, the A&R Fund is flying a lonely flag for adaptation in a challenging fundraising environment.

Its donors are betting, though, that the new initiative could reshape this environment. “There is now true philanthropic commitment, not just in words, but in dollars, to start to address this [adaptation] issue — and I know that there are other philanthropies that are already thinking about joining us,” says Claire Harbron, CEO of the Howden Foundation, a founding contributor to the pool.

Yet just how much of a difference one little fund can make to the climate-ravaged Global South is up for debate. US$50mn represents just 0.01% - 0.02% of the annual adaptation finance gap for developing countries, and the A&R Fund is dwarfed by UN-backed vehicles like the Adaptation Fund, which has approved US$137mn in new projects this year alone. It also remains to be seen whether the fund’s capital will be deployed in a way that maximizes its impact.

“If philanthropies, and donors — and private capital actors — knew what they were doing to solve the many aspects of the polycrisis we would not have the misallocation of capital at the crisis levels that we do,” warns Gillian Marcelle, CEO of Resilience Capital Ventures, a strategic advisory firm focused on mobilizing capital for adaptation and development. 

Still, she’s hopeful. “Getting five foundations to play nicely in the sandbox is non-trivial,” she says.