Climate & Environment
Sustainable growth and resilience to climate change
We develop services and strategies to protect those with the least means from an imperiled environment and changing global climate.
Resilience—the capacity to cope with imminent environmental change—is essential to survival.
Communities around the world are feeling the effects of climate change. But the poorest are hit the hardest. They are the least equipped to recover from the devastation that can result from weather extremes such as storms, floods, eroding coastlines, heat waves, and droughts. The subsequent loss of clean water for drinking and fishing, the loss of productive conditions for agriculture, hunting and grazing, and the spread of malaria and other heat-related diseases create threats to health and survival.
Resilience is Key
Africa and Asia are two regions that are particularly vulnerable.
- In Asia, both climate change and unplanned urbanization put countries at greater risk than in any other region in the world. Our resilience-building efforts in ten Asian cities are designed to serve as a model for cities everywhere. The Foundation has committed hundreds of millions of dollars in grants in the last decade to enable communities in Africa to survive and sustain themselves in the face of life-and-death struggles resulting from floods, droughts, and drops in agricultural yields.
- A joint commitment between the Rockefeller Foundation, Oxfam America, and Swiss Re, announced in September 2009, focuses on using innovative solutions—such as drought insurance and microcredit lending—to help smallholder farmers in Ethiopia adapt to current risks from climate change.
The Foundation also works with a select group of leading regional agriculture research and development institutions in Africa to help them develop their own internal adaptation programs so that small-scale farming can become more productive, profitable, sustainable and stable.