The India Climate Collaborative (ICC) is a first-of-its kind collaborative with the goal of building India’s climate ecosystem. We harness climate philanthropy’s potential, using a three-pronged approach:
We unlock philanthropic capital flows by advising philanthropists who are new to climate action or want to give differently.
We discover, design, and surface climate priorities that mitigate emissions and build resilience, aligned with India’s development pathways.
We build connective infrastructure to enable impactful funding through platforms or shared resources for the sector.
We achieve this through four clear priority areas:
Building a cohort of visionary climate philanthropists.
Unlocking corporate philanthropy.
Enabling cross-sectoral investments to accelerate climate action.
Pooling grant funding to achieve systemic climate action.
With the overall goal of building a by-India, for-India climate philanthropy ecosystem, the ICC, with the support of Rainmatter Foundation, aims to:
Increase donor knowledge and advise them on strategic climate investments
Build capacity of non-profits
Platform Indian voices and leadership at global forums
Strengthen the climate ecosystem through collaboration
We believe in the power of collective action and through this partnership, we want to collaboratively bolster the Indian climate philanthropy ecosystem to facilitate equitable, impactful, and just climate action in India.
The ICC has created and launched a climate solutions platform, Earth Exponential (EE), that aims to build momentum towards solving the climate crisis by accelerating funding towards home grown climate solutions. The goal of the platform is to unlock corporate philanthropy by connecting Corporate Social Responsibility teams to high-impact climate projects. The EE website showcases solutions across five priority thematic areas: Farms, Cities, Jobs, Nature, and Resilience. Currently, 15 projects have been onboarded onto the platform and 5 more are being added in the next few months.
In addition to this, the EE team has also started hosting thematic convenings for the CSR and funder community at large. On the 2nd of May, the team organised a virtual convening on the topic ‘Cities of the Future: Building Climate Resilience’. With an aim to foster inclusive, sustainable, and scalable solutions, the session delved into understanding urban resilience frameworks, CSR funding perspectives, and showcased solutions on waste management and supporting urban street vendors. The event entailed a context setting introduction by Aagya Purohit from C40 Urban Planning Climate Labs, a panel discussion with Sharada Singh, RPG Foundation and Santanu Basu, HCL Foundation, moderated by Manu Gupta, SEEDS India, and presentations by Hunnarshala Foundation and Waste Warriors on their urban resilience work. The event was attended by over 140 people from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from NGOs and policy organisations to corporates.
Additionally, the India Climate Leaders (ICL) vertical at the ICC has put together a series of documents to guide donors towards identifying key areas of impact. This repository of information can help potential donors learn about what constitutes a ‘good climate solution’ and help them understand it ibetter by describing the problem, its connection with climate, and the potential approaches to solving it. This is the first of a series of collateral that is being planned, and we hope to create several more such documents.
