Friday, February 20, 2015
Nathan Cummings Foundation Announces New Grantmaking Areas
Human development and prosperity since the Industrial Revolution have improved the lives of millions of people. This progress, however, has come with a debilitating cost: climate change that results directly from human activity. This anthropogenic effect can have a negative impact on oceans, climate, and other natural systems, threatening the well-being of all who share the planet. NCF will address anthropogenic climate change by supporting promising work that activates ingenuity at home, and under the appropriate circumstances, in other parts of the world.
At best, the challenges of human development and climate change are often considered in isolation from each other. At worst, these imperatives are seen as being in conflict, with environmental sustainability viewed as a threat to economic growth, and vice versa. Both problems will remain unsolvable if we continue to treat them as part of some zero-sum game. In fact, both imperatives – the need to raise living standards for the poor and the need to transition the planet to a zero- or low-carbon future – are interconnected....