Alliance Essay Prize

The first Alliance essay prize asked the question: As a philanthropist, how would you spend $10 million to combat global warming?

The winning essay and the five runners-up are published here with the aim of promoting debate on this crucial issue. The winning essay will also be published in the December issue of the magazine.

The winning essay

The key is coal by Paul Growald, Eileen R Growald and Joanna Messing

Paul Growald is a feature and documentary films executive producer and venture philanthropist. 
Eileen R Growald is an author and venture philanthropist.
Joanna Messing is philanthropy advisor and president of Positive Ventures, LLC.

The £1,000 prize money will be donated to further the Growald Family Fund's efforts to fight coal.

Click here to view the winning essay

The runners-up

• Rebecca Adamson and Scott Klinger The indigenous peoples climate action fund
• Stewart Allen The barefoot approach to climate change
• Tim Ogden and Dean Karlan Help people keep a commitment to conservation
• Juraj Mesik Doing a lot with very little
• Rachael Young Holding corporations accountable for climate change

Organizing an essay prize on climate change philanthropy – some reflections

Jon Cracknell

The Environmental Funders Network has found it very rewarding to work with Alliance on this first essay prize, focused on climate change philanthropy. Given the impact that climate change is likely to have on causes that are dear to many philanthropists (public health, global poverty, security, migration, human rights, and the prospects of future generations), it is disturbing to find that less than 1 per cent of trust and foundation grants are directed towards climate change mitigation in major philanthropy marketplaces such as the US and UK. One of the reasons why trusts are reluctant to engage with climate change is that the issue seems so multi-faceted and daunting that it is difficult to know where to begin. Our hope in organizing the essay prize is that we might help funders think through some of the different ways that they could make a contribution.

The essays that we received were certainly diverse in terms of the range of ideas put forward and the geographical spread of the projects that were proposed. The winning essay and the runners-up give a sense of the diversity of suggestions. We succeeded in drawing in contributions from both philanthropists and non-philanthropists, and this is something that it seems important to maintain in future years – more dialogue between grantmakers and non-funders on questions of effectiveness is something that would benefit the philanthropy sector overall.

We consciously selected a four-strong judging panel from different regions of the world, looking to blend grantmaking experience with experience of hands-on work on climate change in civil society organizations. While our four judges were fairly consistent in their views on the essays, there were inevitably some differences in opinion. The winning entry, however, was considered to be a good, well-argued essay by all the judges.

Jon Cracknell is coordinator of the Environmental Funders Network. Email jon@greenfunders.org  www.greenfunders.org

Alliance and the Environmental Funders Network would like to thank the four Essay Prize judges:

Athena Ballesteros Manager of International Financial Flows and the Environment, World Resources Institute
Martin Rocholl Policy Director and Program Director, Transport, European Climate Foundation
Girish Sant Trustee, Prayas; Coordinator, Prayas Energy Group
Sandra Smithey Program Officer for the Environment, C S Mott Foundation

Caveat from Girish Sant

While all judges were in favour of the winning essay, Girish Sant, who ranked the entry by Messing et al as the winner, did have a caveat:

“The essay is well articulated and well thought out, but this concept should not be applied to developing countries. Despite the externalities of coal, it is still a low-cost source of energy in many parts of world. I would consider it as a viable solution only in the context of the US and other Annex-I countries (countries that are rich and/ or above the world average in emissions per capita). The rich world would be more than happy to ban new coal plants in low-income countries while they continue to burn excessive coal.”

To highlight Girish’s point, please see the graph showing the discrepancy between European and US carbon emissions compared to those of India and China.