Sarah Farrell On Financing The "Resilience Continuum"

Time is not on our side.

Climate risks are here, and are only getting worse. To protect and prepare vulnerable communities, we need finance to rush in at speed and in scale.

Impatience Earth, as the name suggests, isn't waiting around to see this done. The UK-based nonprofit provides pro-bono advice to philanthropic funders looking to enhance their climate strategies — and get their money moving now.

On today's episode, Sarah Farrell,  Climate Philanthropy Advisory Director at Impatience Earth, explains why philanthropic investment in climate resilience represents “a leap of faith” that she and her team are working to get more funders comfortable with. She speaks to the different strategies used to coax wary funders to embrace this still poorly understood niche, and explains why it's so important that progressive donors adopt a more venture capital mindset to supporting resilience initiatives.

She also shares her latest work with the nonprofit SouthSouthNorth on promoting the “Resilience Continuum”, a financing framework that seeks to move donors beyond the tired adaptation-mitigation binary and channel dollars into community-level resilience for the long term.

It's a terrific conversation for all those engaged in the tough, but essential, work of moving philanthropic capital into the adaptation and resilience space.

Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We talk about:

👉 The scale of the challenge shifting philanthropic dollars towards adaptation and resilience

👉 Why donor education and training is crucial to unlocking more resilience finance

👉 Why philanthropic funding is always a “leap of faith”, and how to get more donors comfortable making this leap for climate resilience

👉 The “Resilience Continuum” concept and why it represents a new paradigm for climate philanthropy

👉 What strategies and tactics work when it comes to influencing donors to support resilience initiatives

📰 Read the Impatience Earth / SouthSouthNorth article on the “Resilience Continuum” HERE

Thanks for listening!

Louie Woodall
Editor