PHILANTHROPY
Ten years after Paris, climate funders told targets are no longer the work
Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, and Claire Bulger, its Executive Director of International and Strategic Foresight, argue that ten years after the Paris Agreement climate philanthropy must change how it operates internationally. Projected warming has fallen significantly since 2015, they write, but the 1.5C threshold has been surpassed, and the next phase concerns transforming energy, industry, finance and trade systems.
Their five priorities read as an attempt to replace reaction with direction: defending the universal Paris framework while funding faster coalitions, concentrating on nodes such as insurance markets, carbon standards and critical minerals, paying for Track 1.5 and Track 2 diplomacy, attending to legitimacy in producer countries, and holding institutions open before they become fashionable. Patience, they note, is philanthropy's comparative advantage over electoral cycles.
Source: Alliance Magazine · September 15, 2026