Foundation News

By Dan Chu, Executive Director, Sierra Club Foundation and Board Chair, Confluence Philanthropy

We are facing the greatest challenges to humanity in our lifetimes from the combined pandemic and climate crises. These two existential threats are tearing apart the fabric of our society and exposing deep inequities and injustice.

These two crises impact all of us, but with particularly devastating impacts on communities that are most economically and environmentally stressed. The Sierra Club Foundation is deeply and urgently committed to addressing such systemic racism. Having already divested from fossil fuels, we are proactively seeking ways to move trillions of dollars away from an extractive and exploitative economy to a new economy that is sustainable and socially just. Last month at the Confluence Philanthropy Climate Summit a number of speakers lifted up a number of emerging public policy and investment opportunities in climate solutions and resilience that also promote social justice and racial equity.  

Over the past few years, a growing movement of labor, environmental and social justice leaders developed the Equitable and National Climate Platform to inform public policy and provide funding to advance climate justice. This widely supported National Platform informed the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative outlined in a White House Fact Sheet regarding executive actions to tackle the climate crisis, which commits to advancing environmental justice by striving to have at least 40% of public investments benefit disadvantaged communities. Sierra Club’s comprehensive Build Back Better Plan calls for creating family-sustaining jobs for over 15 million people for the next 10 years, while countering systemic racism, supporting clean air and public health, and cutting climate pollution in half.

The recently passed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act directs significant public funding to the communities most impacted by covid and climate crises. The next big public funding push, the Biden American Jobs plan, a long-awaited major infrastructure bill over $2 trillion in size, will focus on modernizing the country’s dangerously old infrastructure.  One hundred-year-old water, sewer, and gas lines, crumbling roads and bridges, and failing power grids make all of us vulnerable. 

The injection of trillions of dollars of public funding into underserved communities provides opportunities and demands shared responsibility, including from investors and funders to move trillions of dollars of private capital towards advancing climate solutions, resilience, and social justice. The Sierra Club Foundation is joining other investors and funders to invest in climate justice projects by utilizing a variety of financial tools, including private equity, recoverable grants, loans, and loan guarantees. It is not only good for the planet and communities, but it is also good for our financial bottom line.

Confluence’s recent Climate Solutions Summit presented a series of discussions around the important role that values-aligned investors can and must play to accelerate the Biden-Harris administration’s far-reaching climate, justice, and clean energy plans, and the return of the US to being a global leader in addressing the climate crisis. Breakout sessions dove deep into climate justice themes, such as investing in women for international resilience, supporting climate refugees, and providing access to climate-just energy for vulnerable communities. I left feeling inspired and optimistic that we can create a climate-just world. We at the Sierra Club Foundation and Confluence Philanthropy strongly believe that now is the time for the Biden administration to convene policy makers, community leaders, and investors to identify and commit to private/public investment collaborations that can quickly inject trillions of dollars to create a new economy that provides healthy air, clean water and a stable climate for ALL of us to thrive on this planet.