Climate philanthropy ‘held back’ across Middle East and North Africa

Climate funding across North African and the Middle Eastern countries is held back by donor structures, ‘fragmented coordination, limited knowledge infrastructure, and policy environments that discourage sustained advocacy’, according to a new report mapping out climate philanthropy by the Arab Foundations Forum (AFF). 

The MENA Climate Philanthropy Ecosystem Pre-Mapping, launched alongside global climate philanthropy network WINGS, found a ‘highly uneven’ landscape with Lebanon and Morocco holding the highest concentration of philanthropic activity. 

Both Lebanon and Morocco had eight philanthropies each dedicated on climate philanthropy, while Egypt and Tunisia both had five climate philanthropies each, while Iraq and Sudan had two each. Algeria, Libya, and Somalia – the latter also considered part of the Arab region – had the lowest number, with just one mapped organisation.

The report mapped 19 funders across the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Palestine, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Of 19 organisations, 14 deploy community-based and grassroots support, ‘the most common implementation strategy, ahead of research and knowledge creation and advocacy and campaigning’. 

It also found so-called funding clusters around issues such as biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, water and air pollution, and agriculture/agroecology, all considered as the most-funded climate priorities by nine organisations.  

Just two organisations cited early warning systems and weather forecasting as part of their funding, showing that those areas remain significantly underfunded. 

AFF also called for ensuring food security that went beyond access to adequate nutrition with the ‘development of sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems that are not dependent on external markets.’

The MENA region is vulnerable to global trade and supply chain shocks, given it imports over half of its food supply. Russia’s war on Ukraine, as well as the current US war on Iran have both heightened anxieties.

And there is already heightened anxiety given that the MENA region is among the most climate-vulnerable in the world, with droughts, rising temperatures and displacement rising. 

‘Despite this, the region’s climate philanthropy ecosystem has remained largely undocumented, leaving funders, civil society, and policymakers to operate without a shared picture of who is doing what, where, and how.’ 

Philanthropy was also urged to step into agricultural innovation ‘ that engage simultaneously with food, livelihoods, health, and management of natural resources through a multisystem approach, instead of a siloed approach that isolates food production, distribution, consumption, and natural resources from each other’.

‘For decades, civil society in the Arab region has been doing climate work, under different names, at different scales, often without the funding or coordination it deserves. This pre-mapping is our first systematic attempt to see the landscape clearly, so the next decade of climate philanthropy in our region can be more connected, better resourced, and grounded in what communities actually need,’ said Naila Farouky, CEO of the Arab Foundations Forum. 

Shafi Musaddique is the news editor at Alliance magazine