Philanthropic Foundations in Environmental Governance

This review examines the involvement of philanthropic foundations in environmental governance. Foundation funding for environmental issues has surged in recent years, elevating the role of philanthropic actors in shaping environmental agendas, policies, organizations, and discourses globally. Foundations remain understudied in the literature on multi-actor environmental governance, however, with implications for both research and practice. Increased research attention to foundations as environmental governance actors is especially needed amid growth in green giving, shrinking public environmental funding, and intensifying scrutiny of the philanthropic sector. The review thus outlines trends in funding flows from foundations for environmental issues, conceptualizes foundations as environmental governance actors, highlights existing research on foundations’ environmental governance roles and legitimacy, and addresses methodological challenges for research on philanthropy. We conclude with a call to action for increased research and engagement between environmental governance scholars and philanthropic foundations to both inform environmental philanthropy as a field of practice and enhance environmental governance scholarship.