Systemic Climate Action Collaborative
Towards prosperous, inclusive, climate resilient societies
The Systemic Climate Action Collaborative is a groundbreaking initiative uniting 15 diverse partners working across six continents, with a cumulative global track record of over 250 years. Our coalition is bringing together leading foundations, philanthropists, corporations, public institutions, and more, in a collective endeavour to overcome climate inaction and fragmentation.
We are determined to create a paradigm shift, moving beyond siloed climate efforts ensuring that the scale and coordination of our action meets the urgency and pervasiveness of the crisis by aligning our ambitions, coordinating our efforts, exchanging learnings and information, and pooling resources.
We are poised to commit significant resources towards climate action and systemic transformation.
Why we are here
Climate change is already here and it is exacerbating poverty, inequality and biodiversity loss worldwide. As we go into 2024, we are already breaching 1.5 degrees of global average warming. Climate change undermines people’s livelihoods, health, safety and ability to thrive and leads them to draw more heavily and unsustainably on nature, and debt — causing a vicious cycle. For example, drought-intensified wildfires devastate people’s lives, livelihoods, and sources of food; kill and displace people and wildlife; and drive-up greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change affects all of us and especially the Global South.
Yet this is about much more than climate change. One of the challenges we face is, ironically, the terminology itself. Labelling the issue as a 'climate crisis' inadvertently compartmentalizes it, sidelining the broader socio-political and economic dysfunctions that contribute to environmental degradation. This framing risks undermining the interconnectedness of the problem, which manifests not just as atmospheric changes, but as deep-rooted inequalities and systemic failings. The crisis disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable, thereby making it intrinsically linked to humanitarian objectives, health and wellbeing, human rights, and equity and justice.
Bold systemic action is our only way forward. We are doing too little, too late, relying on thinking, institutions and economics that are part of the problem, iterating on a broken system. We need to recognize that this is not a singular 'climate issue' but a complex web of interrelated challenges that demand integrated solutions. Addressing climate change is about people—empowering communities, fostering sustainable economies, and nurturing capabilities. It is about creating holistic strategies that not only protect our environment but also enhance species and biodiversity. Funders committed to humanity should view climate action as a foundational pillar that underpins all other efforts. This is a collective, urgent task to secure our future and that of future generations.
We must overcome many interrelated challenges. A key challenge is delayed political and corporate acceptance and leadership on this issue. Funding for climate action is still highly fragmented, sectoral, restricted, unevenly distributed and rarely enables local leaders to act. Likewise, implementing organizations are not collaborating sufficiently to bring credible proposals at scale and instead spend too much time competing for scarce financial resources. The work of coordination of the parts and orchestration of systemic outcomes – is not happening far or fast enough. Plus, the easiest actions on the path to net zero have already been taken. What lies ahead is significantly more difficult: structural change in social, economic, and financial systems.
Our vision
The vision is that by coming together, in 10 years’ time, we will have enhanced and saved the lives of millions of people, and we will have evidence of what works to live sustainably and to restore our planet. The core outcomes we commit to pursue in 10 years include:
- Mitigation Outcome: 40 gigatons of avoided or drawn down CO2-eq emissions globally by 2040, amounting to approximately 10% of the 1.5 C - aligned global carbon budget at the start of 2023.
- Regeneration and Restoration Outcome: 35 million hectares of degraded ecosystems restored, amounting to approximately 10% of currently degraded land globally.
- Adaptation and Resilience Outcome: Resilience to the impacts of climate change rapidly improved for 1 billion people through behavioral change, adaptation, and environmental regeneration.
We believe our ambitious core outcomes can only be achieved when we can come together and invest in underfunded yet crucial leverage elements in the systems we are part of, including:
- Narrative, Mindset, and Paradigm Shifts: Engaging creative networks to shift public imagination and behaviors towards more sustainable practices. Harnessing the power of individuals as stewards of change, emphasizing collaborative efforts and community leadership. Building and deploying positive narratives and visions of the future showing that sustainable, equitable living, and meeting human needs can be achieved by using less energy, less materials, and less resources, and in respect of nature.
- Enabling Conditions Support: Establishing a foundational layer that supports systemic transformation through education, civic trust, and access to resources. Analyzing the hidden barriers and handbrakes to effective climate action and bringing collective sensemaking and imagination to creating alternative futures.
- Policy Support and Amplification: Ensuring policies at global, regional and national levels are aligned with sustainability goals, enhancing incentives to support these goals and avoiding counterproductive measures across different sectors. Working with many partners, to amplify our collective voice and share best models for policy development across sectors.
- New Financial and Economic Models: Developing new asset classes and funds that recognize and incentivize sustainability, aligning business activities with policy and sustainability goals. Investing in creative new models that can fuel virtuous market-based solutions to social and environmental problems, and contributing to sunsetting damaging, high emissions practices and institutions.
- Integration of the Parts and Orchestration: Orchestrating systemic outcomes by combining and integrating multiple solutions and theories of change; facilitating synergies across diverse interventions, selected and combined in mutually reinforcing ways to address interdependencies and discover how to catalyse change. Maintaining and building an adaptive capacity with flexibility to respond to crises and to emerging needs and challenges. Creating mechanisms for knowledge sharing, scaling successful interventions, and replicating impactful strategies.
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