Over the last year, we’ve attended several climate philanthropy gatherings where the agendas have focused on either geographical priorities (for example, Southeast Asia or Africa) or sectoral ones (for example, grid decarbonization, scaling wind and solar, or industrial policy). However, discussions about the human infrastructure required to drive transformational climate initiatives were almost always missing from the programming.

In our work as organizational leaders, including at the global climate education and careers platform Terra.do, we’ve found that thousands of skilled, accomplished people around the world are hungry to tackle climate change. Yet in our conversations with climate philanthropists, we’ve seen too little interest in investing in workforce development and deployment. We’ve heard a lot of talk about “clean tech,” “sustainable finance,” and “speed and scale,” and far less about the people implementing these ideas—the actual leaders building scrappy nonprofits, the wonks drafting policy frameworks, the electricians installing resilient infrastructure, or the community organizers doing public engagement.

The path to a zero-carbon future isn’t paved solely with technologies and laws—it runs through people’s livelihoods, labor, and leadership. To make real progress, the field must invest in the next generation of climate leaders, create cheap and scalable green skilling pathways, strengthen organizational capacity, and connect new talent to meaningful climate careers.

How We Got Here: A Policy-First Approach That Neglects to Invest in Workforce Development

For the past two decades, climate philanthropy, especially in the United States, has used policy as the primary lever of change. That’s understandable: Since the global economy drives carbon emissions, changing the rules that govern that economy is essential, and policy wins like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Paris Agreement are important to progress. During the Biden Administration, the IRA was projected to slash US carbon emissions between 43 and 48 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, doubling the pace of reductions. While the impact of the Paris Agreement is harder to estimate, countries have nevertheless advanced global climate action in significant ways since it was signed, including through the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund that provides financial assistance to poor countries. It also serves as a global rallying cry, framework, and platform to address the climate crisis, much like the Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the full article about climate-related philanthropy investing in talent by Roshan Paul and Kamal Kapadia at Stanford Social Innovation Review.