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Shloka Nath on Building a New Coalition of Climate Funders in India

Bellagio Breakthrough
Published DateSeptember 25, 2023

Shloka Nath grew up devoted to the natural world thanks to her father, an avid wildlife photographer and conservationist. Having roamed the jungles of South India with him – in places like Nagarahole National Park – Shloka was led to work in the climate field when she realized that forests across the country were disappearing, and her connection to the natural world was under threat.

Today, Shloka is part of a new generation pushing for social change in India, driven by young women leaders. She is now the CEO of the India Climate Collaborative (ICC), a network spanning government, business, philanthropy, and civil society that designs, finances, and implements climate solutions in the region. Prior to this role, Shloka co-founded the Sankhya Women Impact Fund, a financial support system for women entrepreneurs.

Building on the goal to create a robust domestic ecosystem for climate funding in India, Shloka and the ICC came to the Bellagio Center in 2023 to lead Indian donors toward developing a charter of funded programs that will fast-track ambitious climate mitigation action.

How is your work helping to address the climate crisis?

India is critical when it comes to the global climate story. We’re the third-largest emitter in the world and the seventh-most vulnerable to climate impact, so India’s progress – or, conversely, our inaction – actually has the power to determine what the planet’s climate future will look like. This also means that India has an incredible opportunity to lead the transition. That context, and that responsibility, is the reason we started the ICC.

The ICC is an ecosystem enabler that aims to build the field of climate philanthropy in India. But we don’t just focus on funding. For capital to be truly impactful we need visionary leadership that can address the very unique challenges and developmental priorities of India and the Global South. A key ICC development program – supported by The Rockefeller Foundation – is focused on supporting and strategically aligning Indian philanthropic leaders. These leaders are able to marry the weight of their catalytic funding and the influence of their global advocacy in order to accelerate India’s progress on climate action.

We really believe that philanthropy will help address the climate finance gap. This funding is critical, patient, and flexible. It doesn’t require a financial return and it can be deployed quickly. It can be used to fund spaces where other forms of capital can’t go, especially when we talk about enabling innovation, or supporting unbiased data and research protecting vulnerable communities. We also recognise that philanthropy alone cannot fill the climate finance deficit. But it can be used to solve bottlenecks, reduce risk, and allow other forms of capital to flow in.

That’s our mission: to harness the potential of climate philanthropy, and to drive climate ambition and action for a better world.

  • We really believe that philanthropy will help address the climate finance gap. This funding is critical, patient, and flexible. It doesn't require a financial return and it can be deployed quickly.
    Shloka Nath

What breakthroughs need to happen for us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and also prepare communities to adapt to the new challenges that will arise?

Any successful climate action must put people first, and must be characterized by the principle of equity. In India, solutions to the climate crisis can’t be separated from existing development challenges, whether it’s energy access, poverty or even conversations around gender. We have to build solutions that unlock opportunities for vulnerable communities. A great example is the clean energy transition, which supports communities across India who are engaged in emissions-intensive livelihoods and provides them with alternate, secure jobs in greener industries.

But it’s not just about India alone. At our Bellagio convening, the ICC brought together actors from across the globe in order to converge diverse perspectives and arrive at a shared understanding of the challenges, goals, priorities, and solutions that we desperately need in order to solve this crisis globally, collectively, and on a systems level.

And I don’t believe it’s just about the planet. It’s also about us. When I think about resilience, specifically the resilience that we can learn from this planet, it’s about more than protecting ourselves from storms and floods. It’s really about how we understand ourselves, how we can support each other, and how we can sustain life. When I think of climate, I think about how we might reimagine human civilization in a way that is circular, mutually beneficial, and infinitely sustaining. We must ask, “How do we create systems where people can be safe and healthy?” This challenge is about learning to care for and listen to each other, as well as make space for doing so. And for me, that is the crux of what we’re trying to do at the ICC.

  • When I think about resilience, specifically the resilience that we can learn from this planet, it’s about more than protecting ourselves from storms and floods. It’s really about how we understand ourselves, how we can support each other, and how we can sustain life.
    Shloka Nath

What keeps you up at night about achieving these goals? What makes you optimistic?

I’m an eternal optimist. I find a lot of hope in the technological solutions to the climate crisis that already exist today, even if they still need to be scaled. But what’s really critical to meeting the climate challenge over and above these technological solutions is how we choose to collaborate within and across national boundaries, and how we internalize the need for collective responsibility for this emergency.

So when I think about solutions, I’m trying to expand them beyond our current policy consensus around technological breakthroughs. We need to think about innovations in institutional structures, partnerships, and philanthropy. We have to ensure that catalytic climate solutions are equitably and sustainably scaled and implemented, wherever they’re needed, in whatever time frame they’re needed. And what will be critical to that is emphasizing the importance of localized climate solutions. We have to marry very localized decision making with a systems change lens, and internalize that within philanthropy, funding, and grant-making culture.

Key barriers that we need to overcome are the binaries between mitigation and adaptation, as well as climate and development. I think these are completely false perceptions. The solutions that we’re trying to build now need to speak to both sides, whether it’s a solution that speaks about climate and development priorities or solutions that integrate mitigation and adaptation. Because if we don’t mitigate we’ll be adapting forever.

Learn more: You can find out more about the ICC; read articles that Shloka has written for Forbes India, including the piece “Why philanthropy needs to include a climate lens”; or watch an interview she did with Bloomberg.

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