The Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN’s) Climate Action Platform enables its members to work across the systemic change spectrum in the region

The Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), Asia’s largest network of social investors, has released two new videos as a part of establishing their Climate Action Platform 2.0 for Earth Day. Keeping with the 53 Earth Day theme, ‘Invest in Our Planet’, the videos spotlight Climate Impact Leaders as part of a series of dialogues, to highlight their work in scaling domestic climate philanthropy in India. The Climate Action Platform 2.0 was launched at AVPN’s South Asia Social Investment Summit in January 2023, to address the philanthropic gap and climate change opportunities in Asia.

The vision of the Climate Action Platform is to drive Asian leadership in the global climate agenda, channel more resources into climate action, and accelerate the global transition to a resilient, sustainable, positive future for all. The Platform has recognised multiple challenges for Asian philanthropy in climate giving through an extensive landscape study, which includes climate issues taking a backseat, a lack of Asian-led climate philanthropies for Asia, and limited knowledge dissemination among the climate field in the region. AVPN’s core strengths position it uniquely to build a bold vision for the Climate Action Platform – due to its well-established membership network, ability to mobilise capital, and ability to build relationships with policymakers.

“We strongly believe that clarity can greatly assist the climate-giving landscape in Asia – as one can see, in India, major funding is being channeled to a few areas only. This creates gaps for other issues that require urgent attention and impact-giving like heat stress, energy access, and sustainable livelihoods. Therefore, through the Climate Action Platform and the work of Climate Impact Leaders – we’re trying to showcase the issues that require capital mobilisation and how critical climate funding can reap real results,” shared Naina Subberwal Batra, CEO, AVPN on the occasion of Earth Day and the launch of the videos.

The first two videos as a part of the Climate Impact Leaders series showcase the journeys of two climate changemakers: Leena Dandekar, Founder & Director of the Raintree Foundation, and Sameer Shisodia, CEO of Rainmatter Foundation. In the first video, Leena shares that the community is the true custodian of the environment, as they are the direct beneficiaries of everything good that the climate has to offer them. She also shares that the pilot project they’re presently undertaking will do 47-49 years of work in a seven to eight–year span. In the second video, Sameer states that they focus on intersectionality to make millions of trade-offs better, to try and find the answers to climate change. The videos then move to cover their viewpoints on lived experiences, collaborations, and local solutions to highlight climate philanthropy and action.

Over the next few months, AVPN is set to launch more videos as part of the Climate Impact Leaders series to help mobilise critical climate capital toward strategic impact.