Every year sees new climate funds, billions pledged for adaptation, forests, resilience, and technology, demonstrating how and why climate funding often doesn't reach the people most impacted by climate change. How much of this money is reaching the people living with the daily realities of climate change?

In many of the communities I work with across Asia and the Pacific, the answer is often: very little, or not at all.

Global climate spending has grown to more than two trillion dollars a year, yet only a small fraction of philanthropic giving supports climate action, and an even smaller share reaches local actors directly. The problem is not only how little philanthropic funding reaches climate work, but also how that money moves.

The Participation Gap: Why Climate Funding Often Doesn't Reach Those Most Harmed by Climate Change

In many cases across the climate finance ecosystem, major philanthropic institutions and implementing agencies, often based in the Global North, determine the priorities, frameworks, and funding flows, with very little input from the communities on the frontlines.

This top-down approach means that entire funding strategies can be built around assumptions of what counts as a valid intervention, what success looks like, and who is seen as capable of delivering it. Local actors are invited in late and asked to implement pre-designed projects rather than shape them. Even when participation is cited as a core principle, it is often symbolic, demonstrating why climate funding often doesn't reach the people most affected by climate change.

Research on civil society financing suggests that less than one percent of development and climate funding reaches grassroots organisations in the global South directly, rather than via multiple intermediaries. Direct access tends to go to those who can provide audited multi-year accounts, navigate applications in fluent English, manage complex reporting portals, and satisfy stringent banking requirements. Many youth-led, women-led, or Indigenous groups cannot, especially when they are informal networks rather than registered entities.

In climate-vulnerable regions where I’ve worked, communities are not short on solutions. They are already restoring degraded ecosystems, adapting livelihoods, protecting water sources, and negotiating with local authorities. But they often lack the flexible resources to scale this work on their own terms. Funding is still largely delivered through project formats that leave little room for locally defined priorities or informal organising.

Read the full article about climate funding by Zainab Bie at Alliance Magazine.