The Independent Philanthropy Association South Africa (IPASA) has launched an initiative for independent philanthropy funders to help counter climate change. This is the South African Philanthropy Commitment on Climate Change and it is the first climate pledge launched in Africa. The intent is to improve the coordination, and allow the consolidation, of private finance to help create climate resilience among the country’s most vulnerable communities.

“Our members are already supporting key social development imperatives such as early childhood development, education, youth unemployment and food security, but by applying a climate lens to work, investments are likely to yield more sustainable outcomes and move us towards building resilience in the most marginalised communities,” explained IPASA executive director Louise Driver. This is necessary because climate change impacts are eroding some of the socioeconomic advances that the association’s 60-member organisations have successfully supported.

Further, it has become clear that public funding alone can not counter climate change.

The South African climate pledge is the tenth such initiative to be launched globally. It follows previous such initiatives in Canada, Brazil, in parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Because, among these, Brazil is the country with the greatest similarity to South Africa, the local initiative has drawn on experiences the two countries shared. These include serious socioeconomic inequality and vulnerable ecosystems as among those factors which are obstacles to sustainable growth.

“The South African climate pledge is the culmination of extensive consultation with climate funders, government initiatives, independent experts and international philanthropic bodies to determine the relevance and most strategic way to integrate climate imperatives into their development practices,” stated IPASA. The association has led a series of discussions on these issues, which started last August. It has also taken the Presidential Climate Commission’s work on the Just Energy Transition into account.

IPASA’s climate change funding commitment had already won the support of the African Climate Foundation, the Grindrod Family Centenary Trust, the Environmental Justice Fund, the Lewis Foundation, and the Southern Africa Trust, among others. (In total, nine funders have now pledged to join the initiative.) The Commitment on Climate Change is now live and can be signed by those independent funders who wish to join. “More than a symbolic gesture, the pledge encourages funders to commit to meaningful, incremental changes that help build climate resilience,” affirmed IPASA.