Rural areas are responsible for more than 36 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, yet only about two percent of the philanthropic dollars devoted to curbing climate change go to groups based in those communities, according to a new report by the Rural Climate Partnership.
Rural areas account for nearly half of all power-plant emissions and 60 percent of all energy generated from coal-fired power plants, according to the report. About 90 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture come from rural areas.
“There is a big gap between the funding and the source of carbon emissions,” says Josh Ewing, director of the Rural Climate Partnership. “There are plenty of rural-based, rural-focused groups that need more resources and whose work could be scaled if climate philanthropy had more of a focus on rural America.”
Rural climate groups have been hamstrung because their work combines two issue areas long neglected by big foundations. Rural organizations received only six to seven percent of philanthropic dollars, according to a 2015 analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the most current estimate available. About 19 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas.
Nonprofits that work to curb climate change receive about two percent of all philanthropic giving, according to the most recent assessment by the ClimateWorks Foundation.
By ignoring rural-based climate groups, grant makers are missing important opportunities to make progress on climate change, Ewing says. He says that although many large environmental groups based in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., work in rural communities, they lack the ties and perspective of the people who live there
“The most trusted messengers are local people,” says Sarah Jaynes, director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, which works on civic engagement, democracy, and climate. Like the Rural Climate Partnership, it is part of the Heartland Fund. “You can’t just go in and talk about climate emissions. What people really want to talk about is what is the benefit to their local community. What are the economic development opportunities? How is it going to help with their soil health?”
The Rural Climate Partnership made $5 million in grants to climate groups based in rural communities last year. This year it expects to make at least $8 million in grants, according to Ewing. But he says that’s just a fraction of the funds that these groups need.
“We could move $25 million out the door with the snap of a finger,” he says.
While a large share of climate emissions come from these rural areas, they are also the places where clean energy is most often located. About 60 percent of solar electricity and 96 percent of wind electricity is generated in rural areas according to the report.
The two-year-old organization has received funding from an array of major environmental grant makers. Its largest funders include the Waverley Street Foundation, which gave the group $8 million, the Ballmer Group ($4 million), and the McKnight Foundation ($2 million). Those grants are over a two-year period.
Ewing says grant makers need to pay more attention to rural climate groups. “You are not going to get to net zero by any stretch of the imagination without building more nonprofit infrastructure,” he says. “We have small groups and groups getting off the ground all over the country.”
