f we don't change how we create and consume energy, temperatures will continue to rise significantly in the coming decades, triggering unpredictable and irreversible consequences related to weather, freshwater supplies, agricultural viability, and more.

As carbon emissions continue to rise, so do average global temperatures. Ice melt and sea-level rise are accelerating beyond modeled predictions. Tipping points once thought to be a century away may occur within our lifetimes.

If we continue with "business as usual," annual global emissions could double by 2030, leading to catastrophic and irreversible consequences. To prevent potentially disastrous warming, by 2030 we must, in fact, cut annual carbon emissions in half. That's 30 billion tons, roughly what the world emits today.

The McKnight Foundation's climate-related strategies emerge from our identity as a place-based family foundation in Minnesota with a long-standing environment program. But without immediate action, climate change will put at risk all those served by our programs.

McKnight does not accept unsolicited requests for funding to combat climate change, but instead channels funding through two partner foundations (ClimateWorks and Energy Foundation). Nonetheless, for decades, the interests of McKnight's board have included regional livability, renewable energy production, and sustainable living. With the implications of climate change exceeding the scope of any single program area, such interests and investments bridge traditional funding boundaries.

Our core commitment to fighting climate change

e believe that decisions made in the next few years will affect the planet's climate and its people for generations. As a private foundation, McKnight has the flexibility and the resources to respond strategically to this extraordinary challenge.

In early 2009, The McKnight Foundation announced it would direct $100 million over the next five years to a comprehensive strategy specially designed to reduce heat-trapping air pollution and prevent the catastrophic impacts of global climate change. McKnight's multifaceted direct approach includes:

• Partnering with other foundations to launch and fund the ClimateWorks Foundation, an international network of philanthropists and policy experts working for clean energy policies and technologies in the areas of the world where most carbon pollution is generated.
• Ongoing support for the Energy Foundation, a grantmaker that pools and targets resources to slow climate change and help the Midwest contribute to our nation's sustainable, low-carbon energy supply.
• Select support for policy reform and related efforts to help the Midwest region thrive.

Supportive strategies cross program boundaries: A few examples

ranscending program boundaries, McKnight's board of directors has long supported diverse efforts to minimize humans' impact on the earth's delicate ecosystem. Such work is at the core of our mission.

In addition to strategic grantmaking targeted directly to address climate change, McKnight's board recognizes the impact that unmitigated climate change would have on all the communities we serve. The sweeping breadth of this threat has prompted us, through the years, to sow supportive strategies into other program areas — fortifying the direct strategies outlined above with a diverse range of foundationwide grants that reflect the issue's impact in all our lives.

Although such impacts and associated costs will vary by program and geography, the overall expense of mitigation and adaptation will burden public and private resources worldwide. Water shortages will increase as a source of conflict across state and national lines; threats to habitats and ecosystems will intensify; agricultural growing zones may shift dramatically.

For decades, McKnight has demonstrated its commitment to foster a healthy environment for communities to live and work that extends beyond our environment program area through place-based, local work. In Minnesota, we do this frequently through our Region and Communities program.

e encourage community development that uses land and public infrastructure efficiently, including public transit alternatives, car sharing programs, and mixed-use, transit-oriented development. This type of development encourages higher density residential districts, mixed with retail and offices, within easy walking distance of public transit. One McKnight grantee, University United, has launched an ambitious three-part project — a community design studio, a business association, and a research and advocacy team — designed to promote transit-oriented development in the University Avenue corridor of the Twin Cities.

We support efforts to advance green and sustainable housing design, an approach to housing which preserves resources and reduces atmospheric pollution. The Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR) at the University of Minnesota, a McKnight grantee, exists to transform the built environment by making it more energy efficient, healthy, and sustainable. Through research opportunities provided to university faculty and students, CSBR develops tools and a knowledge base for the local building community and serves as a regional resource for public agencies, building owners, and design professionals.

We encourage comprehensive regional planning and community design that helps to lower the number of vehicle miles traveled. Far-flung new housing developments are causing annual increases in overall vehicle miles traveled, adding carbon pollution to the atmosphere. This can be mitigated by public transportation usage. Hennepin County, with McKnight funding, has undertaken an effort to encourage the use of public transit, by improving the aesthetic design and overall usability of the lightrail transit station at the intersection of Hiawatha Avenue and Lake Street in Minneapolis.

We promote expanding green infrastructure through open space preservation. Similar to transit-oriented design, open space is important because it raises environmental awareness and appreciation, and it encourages activities that protect the planet. McKnight grantee Midtown Greenway Coalition oversees the most highly used commuter bike corridor in the state, with more than 3,600 uses per day in the summer. Running through 16 neighborhoods from west Minneapolis to the Mississippi River, the midtown greenway increases livability through open space, better design, art, transit, and community connections around this common asset.

limate change already presents challenges to food security in resource-poor areas of the world, of direct interest to the McKnight Collaborative Crop Research Program. In this context, we continue to seek innovative and environmentally sensitive solutions to food security issues. We support intensive research by the program's "communities of practice," targeted to discovering local solutions for regionally specific food needs, and maintain a commitment to sustainable farming that respects both people and our environment, including thoughtful attention to land use and conservation.

In the Andes of Peru, for example, our team has launched an innovative project to aid farmers whose potato crops are threatened by weevils. Using an environmentally friendly biopesticide to manage the pests — which are encroaching on the farmers' land due to changes in their habitat caused by climate change — the project is simultaneously sustainable, environmentally friendly, and it preserves livelihoods.

For decades, McKnight has also supported economic and community development projects in two select regions of the world that face direct pressures from scarce natural resources, especially water and crop land.

In our East Africa program, for example, McKnight grantee Tanzania Forest Conservation Group manages a butterfly farming project aimed at helping people in the Amani region of Tanzania gain income from non-consumptive use of the protected areas. This area of the eastern Usambaras mountains — called “the Galapagos of Africa” — contains over 90% of the country's endemic species and is globally recognized as a biodiversity hotspot, now threatened by human uses. Projects of this type have the dual positive effect of improved livelihoods and creating incentives to participate in conservation.

And in our Southeast Asia program, in the Veal Veng district in southwestern Cambodia — home to wild elephants, rare crocodiles, and many other animal and plant species, and considered one of the most important locations for biodiversity conservation in Southeast Asia — McKnight grantee Fauna and Flora International supports an effort by ethnic communities to obtain official recognition of their natural resource management rights. The organization has supported doing so sustainably; under way are projects related to hydropower, improved agricultural production, and the active involvement of local communities in protecting forest resources.

hroughout all of this work, we recognize significant opportunities for economic development in addressing climate change. Among our overlapping interests in the environment, regional livability, workforce development, and community-building, we see rich potential for the Midwest's nonprofits, local and state governments, and citizens to benefit from strategic responses to climate change. Our home state of Minnesota is well positioned to profit from public and private investments in sustainable agriculture, renewable energy production and transmission, and the beauty of our water-rich region.

McKnight's Mississippi River program strives to maintain and restore a healthy environment in the Mississippi River basin, working in the 10 states through which the river flows. The river and its tributaries provide drinking water for more than 20 million people. The north-south orientation of the 2,400-mile river is vital for fish and wildlife adapting to a changing climate. Already, seasonal weather patterns are changing, ice cover is decreasing, and precipitation occurs more often as extreme events.

Our river program strategies, which include restoring land and enforcing laws to reduce water pollution, help mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. McKnight grantee the National Audubon Society works along the entire river to restore wetlands and foster river reforestation that enhances wildlife habitats, while helping the river endure droughts and floods. Audubon engages local chapters and members, nature centers, programming, and collaboration with other advocacy organizations in pursuit of policies and projects that benefit the Mississippi River.

McKnight also supports Midwestern collaborations to take advantage of regional opportunities and develop uniform policies and practical solutions to the most pressing climate challenges and to strengthen multistate collaboration toward regional carbon reductions, as illustrated by two grants in 2008 totaling $3 million.

The first grant was $2 million over two years to RE-AMP, a regional network of nonprofits in the Midwest that seeks to make significant reductions in pollution that causes global warming, primarily from generating and using electricity. Managed by the Rockefeller Family Fund, this seven-state collaborative strives for Midwest leadership in 21st-century clean energy by reducing electricity sector global warming pollutants 80 percent by 2030.

The second grant was $1 million over 18 months to the Council of State Governments, to implement the Midwest Governors Assocation Energy Security and Climate Stewardship Platform and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. The Accord serves as a regional strategy to achieve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. This effort is the third regional initiative in the country seeking to address global warming and renewable energy issues in the absence of federal leadership. (Others are the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in New England and the Western Climate Initiative, which involves seven states and two Canadian provinces.)

The time to act is now

As McKnight president Kate Wolford said a December 2008 letter to grantees,

"As the economic downturn creates a troubling new context in which to expand our climate work, it also raises the issue's urgency. We believe strategic philanthropic investments made now can help chart a new low-carbon future, one that is good for the environment and the economy."

Sierra Club founder John Muir said "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." Mindful of this principle, McKnight's financial commitment to combat climate change crosses program areas and geographies; and our strategies are governed by a committed board motivated to employ resources appropriate to the issue's magnitude, reaching across geographies and program boundaries to ensure maximum impact.

Related links
McKnight's climate change grantmaking
ClimateWorks Foundation
Energy Foundation
Midwest Governors Association
RE-AMP

Related media
Mother Nature's Dow, New York Times
McKnight pursues comprehensive strategy to address global climate change, news release
The Firepower of the Lowly Caulk Gun, Wall Street Journal
McKnight to join international battle on climate change, Star Tribune
McKnight Foundation commits $100 million to combat climate change, MinnPost.com
Open letter about 2009 grantmaking from President Kate Wolford