Janet Fleischman is an independent consultant with extensive experience in research, policy advocacy, and narrative storytelling. Jyotsna Uppal is a historian and narrative strategist, who supports individuals and organisations in change processes.

Global climate progress sits at the centre of an acute crisis, as the multilateral order that structured international climate cooperation for three decades frays at the seams.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from 66 United Nations and international organisations in early 2026, compounded by its exit from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, has launched a rupture in the governance architecture and the geopolitical consensus that made multilateral climate action conceivable.

Institutions have been stripped of authority, voluntary commitments left contingent on political will.

At this precarious moment, what can and should climate funders be doing?

• 

  Apr 17, 2026

  Politics

  Q&A: Look beyond Trump for the full story on US climate action, says university dean

  Lawyer Lou Leonard, who leads the climate school at Clark University, says Washington’s attacks haven’t halted climate efforts across American society

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• 

  Aug 4, 2026

  Comment

  Is FOMO undermining climate diplomacy?

  The negotiating community has not become 20 times larger, but the COP has – and the rising number of participants, from politicians to business executives, is getting in the way of the task at hand

  Read more

We recently examined the state of environmental multilateralism through an extensive literature review and interviews with climate leaders from around the world – policymakers, UN officials, regional actors, philanthropic leaders and advocates.

Their perspectives reinforced a sobering finding: more consequential than any single country’s efforts to undermine the multilateral system is the deeper question of whether that system is still fit for purpose.

Climate philanthropy must do more than fill gaps left by retreating governments; it must ask harder questions about whether gap-filling is the right role at all – and prepare to catalyse the emergence of something new.

Change will not come without pain.

As Sarah Millar, programme director at the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group, an international philanthropic network and strategic regranter, told us: “What we’re trying to do here is fundamentally rewire the global economy… it’s everything everywhere, all at once. And that’s really hard to do.”

Filling the gaps or leading change?

The multilateral climate system, for all its limitations, remains relatively intact. Countries other than the United States continue to submit national climate plans and participate in global negotiations. Yet participation is not the same as effectiveness – many commitments fall short of what’s needed.

Meanwhile, new regional, thematic and plurilateral coalitions are emerging; voluntary groupings of countries, cities, companies, and civil society organisations aligned around specific climate objectives are increasingly filling the action gap.

Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels

Climate philanthropy has often responded to these gaps by substituting for absent public finance. Arunabha Ghosh, the founder and former CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a climate think-tank based in New Delhi, explained: “Philanthropy is having to fill in the gap of public finance where development assistance is failing.” But this instinct deserves scrutiny.

A more fundamental question is whether gap-filling remains the right approach. Does philanthropy keep a failing system limping along, propping up dysfunction – or does it spur transformation and catalyse what comes next? There is no neutrality here – philanthropy cannot pretend its choices are inconsequential. The question is which position advances the transformation the moment requires.

Compounding these strategic questions is a more immediate threat. As formal multilateralism struggles, the civil society actors who might fill the gap face mounting restrictions – a closing of civic space evident not just in the US but in India, Israel, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere. In the US, the Trump administration has stepped up attacks on philanthropies, threatening legal investigations and the withdrawal of foundations’ tax-exempt status.

For climate philanthropy specifically, there’s a particular risk: support for climate action is increasingly portrayed in some US conservative circles as anti-American.

Conservative actors who emphasise fossil fuels for manufacturing and energy security often equate backing renewables with pro-China stances, since China is the largest green technology manufacturer. Yet the economic evidence points the other way, with the clean energy transition already underway – and the perils of fossil fuel reliance further underscored by the war in Iran.

Winning back the narrative

Underlying all these gaps is a failure of narrative. The story of climate progress – and there is real progress to tell – is not being written by governments.

As Christiana Figueres, an international leader on climate change and the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, put it this way: “The story of progress is being written by a plethora of other stakeholders – subnationals, finance corporations, NGOs – all of whom are doing their thing together. They’re writing an amazing story, and nobody’s writing it and nobody’s reading it and nobody’s taking note of it.”

This storytelling also needs to be more integrated: climate can’t remain a siloed concern but must be linked to health, education, gender equity and migration. Philanthropy can help make these linkages legible to policymakers and the public – expanding the coalition of actors who see climate as central to their own agendas.

UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot

Four directions stand out for catalytic philanthropic support in this fragmented landscape:

• Shift who gets supported, and convene diverse actors. New pathways are needed to support local communities, civil society coalitions, and subnational actors implementing national climate plans.
• Support compelling narratives and amplify affected voices. Listening to affected communities is critical to shaping a just transition that gives communities real agency over change.
• Engage the private sector differently. New financing instruments and blended finance opportunities require philanthropy to engage more strategically with private sector and corporate actors – not merely as funders but as partners to design how catalytic capital can flow.
• Take strategic risks. Philanthropy may need to fund approaches to implementation, finance, and technology that governments and financial institutions won’t support.

This is a precarious moment for multilateralism, civil society and the philanthropic organisations that sustain it.

But that complexity may also provide an opportunity. Philanthropy willing to ask harder questions, take greater risks, and invest in the connective tissue between issues may do more than keep a struggling system afloat.

To catalyse multilateral climate action, many philanthropies recognise that this is the time to deepen their reach. In the words of Ailun Yang, with the environment program at Bloomberg Philanthropies: “Our main way to engage in this is by supporting smart people and innovative ideas. Philanthropy doesn’t necessarily do these things ourselves, and that is really where our superpower is.”

This piece is adapted from a project conducted by Janet Fleischman and Jyotsna Uppal, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Environment Program; however, all the views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own.

The post With multilateralism in crisis, what’s next for climate philanthropy? appeared first on Climate Home News.

With multilateralism in crisis, what’s next for climate philanthropy?

In a bright, spacious factory on the outskirts of Lagos, young engineers in overalls work their way along the production line, carefully inspecting the shimmery blue solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity.

Quality checks completed, the finished solar panels are loaded onto forklifts and taken to a warehouse – ready for delivery to buyers across Nigeria and in neighbouring West African countries. Each panel is labelled “Made in Nigeria”.

But for Emmanuel Agbola, operations manager at Nigerian solar company LPV Technologies, the company’s mission goes beyond quality control and meeting customer orders.

“We are looking at addressing the immediate power needs of Nigeria,” Agbola told Climate Home News in a quiet room away from the steady hum of machinery on the factory floor, where production began last year.

That is no small task. About four out of 10 Nigerians – more than 85 million people – still lack reliable access to grid electricity, according to Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency.

LPV Technologies is among a handful of startups making headway on the nation’s bold ambitions to build a domestic solar panel manufacturing industry, as solar becomes the go-to choice for Nigerian businesses and households fed up with frequent blackouts.

Nigeria’s national grid has collapsed about 22 times during the last two years due to transmission constraints, gas shortages and ageing infrastructure.

That is exactly why local solar panel manufacturing matters, according to Agbola.

“One of our slogans is ‘Make the sun pay for your bills’,” he said.

Solar transforms life for homes and businesses

Nigeria has become one of Africa’s fastest-growing markets for increasingly affordable solar systems, which are providing more reliable and cheaper electricity for homes and workplaces than the fragile power grid.

Nigeria’s rapid solar adoption is being met mostly by small-scale solar installations which have helped bring the country’s total cumulative solar capacity to about 6 gigawatts (GW), according to a report by research provider BloombergNEF.

But almost every panel installed on homes, factories and public buildings across the country is imported – the vast majority from China – something the government wants to change.

“We are preparing to produce in this country the solar technologies that the entire continent will use,” President Bola Tinubu told a group of Chinese investors in 2024.

“Nigeria is a huge market for solar panels. Africa is a major consumer of solar technologies. I do not see why these panels and batteries cannot be produced here,” he said.

Two years on, that ambition is starting to bear fruit.

Not far from LPV’s factory, in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, workers are putting the finishing touches to a new commercial-scale veterinary vaccine cold-storage facility.

Up on the roof, 100 of LPV’s “Made in Nigeria” solar panels have been fixed into position.

Once operational, the panels and attached battery storage will provide round-the-clock electricity for offices, laboratories and cold-storage rooms at the site, helping to keep millions of vaccine doses safely refrigerated even when the national grid fails.

“This will never go off – all year round,” said the civil engineer overseeing work at the site, pointing to the rooftop installation. “It’s off-grid – 24 hours, seven days; constant electricity to run these two cooling units.”

Government bets on local manufacturing

The Nigerian government wants solar power to play a central role in bridging the country’s electricity access gap, but it also wants the equipment that will drive that transition to be produced at home to create new jobs and reduce imports. That aligns with its wider Nigeria First industry policy.

Nigeria’s booming solar market is still overwhelmingly supplied by foreign-made panels.

Last year, it imported about 2.9 million panels worth more than 400 billion naira ($295 million). More than 70% of them came from China, making Nigeria Africa’s second-largest importer of Chinese panels after South Africa.

China dominates almost every stage of the global solar manufacturing supply chain and a series of government-led initiatives to kickstart local production have yet to make major headway.

More than a decade ago, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure established the country’s first government-backed solar panel factory in Karshi, Abuja. While successive upgrades have increased its production capacity to about 50 MW annually, the facility still supplies only a fraction of Nigeria’s growing demand.

The government has since announced more ambitious projects, including a Renewable Energy Industrial Park in Nasarawa state, expected to manufacture solar cells, panels and batteries, and a solar module assembly plant under construction by the Energy Commission of Nigeria in Enugu. Neither project has yet begun commercial production.

Last year, the government also proposed restricting solar panel imports to encourage domestic manufacturing, though the idea was swiftly dropped.

Chinese imports dominate solar panel trade

The scale of Nigeria’s challenge is obvious during a visit to Alaba International Market in Lagos, one of Africa’s largest electronics markets and a solar retail hub where thousands of panels change hands every week.

One recent morning in June, cart pushers could be seen weaving their way between crowds of shoppers and traffic jams, their trolleys stacked high with loads of freshly imported solar panels.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and fossil fuel exports have been the cornerstone of the economy for decades. But in the bustling market, solar has become such a good business in recent years that traders call it “the new oil“.

Even so, few said they had ever seen panels made in Nigeria.

“Every panel we get is imported,” said wholesaler Ndubuisi Nwobodo, adding that it was the first time he had heard of panels being produced domestically.

At one of the market’s largest solar warehouses, manager Chidiebere Ani watched as workers unloaded another container of supplies from China. He said 95% of the warehouse’s stock of panels came from China.

China controls more than 80% of global manufacturing capacity, according to the International Energy Agency, spanning every stage of the supply chain, from polysilicon and wafers to solar cells and finished modules.

Meanwhile, production at the LPV factory in Lagos is running at about 180,000 panels per year, Agbola said.

“If we had 10 LPVs, we still won’t be able to meet [Nigeria’s] demand,” Agbola said.

Even then, Nigerian producers face a tough contest on price. Imported 550-watt panels retail for about 150,000 naira ($110), the same price that LPV Technologies charges wholesalers.

Policy uncertainty seen as hurdle to investment

Nigeria has plentiful affordable labour and – with a population of roughly 240 million – room for market growth as the falling price of panels makes them accessible to more people.

Chinese firms increasingly see opportunities to build manufacturing partnerships with local businesses, said Susan Li, the founder of Chinese solar company Solar Run Energy.

“We have to grow the industry together,” she said, cautioning that foreign investment in the sector would hinge on stable government policies and a steady exchange rate.

Last year’s short-lived proposal to ban panel imports, which was scrapped a month after it was floated, highlighted such investment concerns, said Wangari Muchiri, founder of Kenya-based RE.Think Energy.

“[One minute] solar imports were banned, and then they were not banned,” Muchiri said. 

“If investors come in and there is already a clear path such that everyone knows how tariffs and customs duties are handled, then businesses can plan for those costs,” she explained. “But when policies keep changing, the risk becomes much higher.”

Li said she believed that “as time goes by, [policies] will become more stable”.

Nigeria’s challenges to scale up production

While Nigeria is making its first panels, it does not yet have the industrial capacity to produce vital solar cell components such as polysilicon, wafers and ingots.

At LPV, Agbola said having to import the components – up to 17 of them – eats into the company’s profit margins.

“When we combine [the cost of importing components] with other fixed-cost elements and we want to do our pricing, it becomes a big challenge for us in the market,” he said.

Because cells are the main component in a solar panel, LPV’s senior brand and marketing manager Kabir Okehi said it would be “a huge relief” to produce them domestically and avoid the high shipping logistics costs associated with imports. It also takes imported solar cells between six weeks and two months to get to Nigeria.

Many of the materials used in solar manufacturing – including silica, aluminium and steel – are available in Nigeria, but the country still lacks the technical know-how to turn them into higher-value components, experts say.

“What is missing in our local production is knowledge transfer,” said Mustapha Abdullahi, director-general of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, a government body responsible for strategic national energy policy planning and coordination.

He said Nigeria is still learning about the technologies needed to make solar cells domestically, with research institutes experimenting with materials such as graphene and production methods that could eventually support upstream manufacturing.

“We’re still in the pilot stages, doing reverse engineering to see how things are done,” he told Climate Home News.

Companies struggle to access startup capital

Another major challenge for homegrown solar manufacturing is finance, Abdullahi said, adding that several Nigerian companies have expressed interest in manufacturing solar panels, but many struggle to secure the capital needed to establish production lines.

The government has tried to bridge that gap by connecting local companies with international financiers, while offering incentives to prospective investors, he said.

Last year, Nigeria announced a partnership with Chinese solar giant LONGi to establish a 1,000 MW manufacturing facility in the country. The agreement, Abdullahi said, is intended to accelerate technology transfer and help Nigeria expand domestic production far beyond its current assembly capacity of roughly 300 MW of solar panels annually.

That is equivalent to 545,000 panels – of about 550 watts each – per year.

Production will need to increase nearly ten-fold, Abdullahi estimated, to meet projected future demand.

As new investments and joint ventures start to yield results, that might be possible, he said.

“Nigeria can even be the solar panel hub globally, not just for Africa, and compete well even with China,” he added.

China as a partner, not a rival

But Nigeria should not be aiming to compete with China, rather learning from it as it seeks to build up its solar industry ecosystem – from assembling imported components to eventually making more of them locally, said Godson Ikiebey, a renewable energy specialist at PwC Nigeria.

China did not become the world’s solar manufacturing giant overnight, Ikiebey said. It developed a long-term industrial strategy, invested heavily in manufacturing capacity and steadily climbed the value chain.

“For now, it’s good to have the ambition, but the ambition does not yet match the action,” Ikiebey added.

China dominates global solar manufacturing not simply because it produces panels cheaply, RE.Think Energy’s CEO Muchiri said, but because it controls technology, supply chains and economies of scale built over decades.

Rather than trying to recreate that system from scratch, Nigeria should join forces with Chinese companies to accelerate technology transfer while developing its own workforce and manufacturing base, she said.

Building an African solar industry should also extend beyond Nigeria, with different countries potentially specialising in different parts of the value chain, fostering regional trade. “This is going to be a big opportunity to look at a regional expansion rather than just one country,” she added.

Bringing such plans to fruition will take time and the goals should be realistic, Chinese investor Li said.

Items such as frames and screws could eventually be produced in Nigeria, but more sophisticated components like solar cells would still need to be imported because their production requires highly automated factories and a stable electricity supply, she said.

“You grow step by step. If you look at the long term, if you grow the seed and water it today, you will get the harvest tomorrow,” Li said.

Clean energy jobs for the future workforce

When President Tinubu described his government’s solar hub plans to Chinese investors, he touted the country’s large, young workforce.

“The labour is cheaper. Our youths are vibrant and skilled. Our people are brilliant and adapt to new technology,” he said.

LPV’s factory in Lagos offers a glimpse of that vision.

A graduate in petroleum engineering, Ibeimo Biobele, 28, had no experience in solar manufacturing when she arrived at the factory a year ago as a member of the National Youth Service Corps – Nigeria’s mandatory one-year national service programme.

Like many university-leavers, Biobele faced an uncertain job market.

More than 93% of Nigerians work in the informal economy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, meaning there are few skilled jobs for graduates like Biobele.

Today, she works on the production line assembling panels and hopes more such jobs will become available for young Nigerians in the years to come.

“If we had more factories like this, more young engineers would have opportunities after school,” she said.

This article was made possible with support from Surge Africa and One World Media.

Main image: A man carries a solar panel on his head while unloading a truck in Lagos, Nigeria (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

The post Made in Nigeria: The race to build an African solar industry from scratch appeared first on Climate Home News.

Made in Nigeria: The race to build an African solar industry from scratch

Uncertainty persists over how COP31 will be managed, after Türkiye’s environment minister told journalists this week his country will have the final say at the UN climate conference despite a deal that gave Australia the role of chairing the negotiations in return for withdrawing its bid for the summit.

At COP30, the two governments resolved a deadlock by agreeing that Türkiye would host this year’s annual talks in the resort city of Antalya with its environment minister Murat Kurum serving as COP31 President, while his Australian counterpart Chris Bowen would act as COP31 President of Negotiations.

Previous COPs have occasionally been hosted by one country and presided over by another. For example, COP23 was held in Germany because of the remoteness and small size of Fiji, and COP25 took place in Spain after social unrest flared in Chile. But COP31 will be the first UN climate summit with the powers of the presidency split between two countries.

Under the unusual arrangement, Türkiye will lead on the Action Agenda, the non-negotiated part of COP which brings together businesses, citizens and local governments to step up climate action in different areas, from curbing methane emissions and protecting health to adaptation in fragile states.

In Brazil last year, when the deal was announced to end the long-running rivalry for COP31, Australia’s Chris Bowen said his role would give him the powers of the COP presidency to manage the official climate negotiations, prepare draft texts and issue any overarching “cover” decision.

But speaking to international media in the Turkish city of Trabzon on Thursday, comments from Kurum – made in Turkish and translated into English by an official translator – suggest that Türkiye sees itself as having ultimate control over the formal outcome of the talks.

Asked how the “co-presidency” would resolve any differences that emerge during the negotiations, he responded: “Türkiye and Australia are not co-presidents. Türkiye is the President of COP31 and Australia is the President of Negotiations. We are in consultation with Australia but the final decision lies with the presidency of COP31.”

“No issues” so far

An official document setting out the “modalities” of the partnership notes that the COP31 President will assign an Australian representative as the “President of Negotiations” and “Vice President of the COP”, to whom the functions of leading the COP31 negotiations are delegated for the duration of the conference and “who will have exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations”.

“If there is a difference of views between Türkiye and Australia, consultations will take place until the difference is resolved to mutual satisfaction,” the document adds.

Kurum said this week that the two countries are working in “good harmony and in shared perspectives. So far, we’ve had no issues. We don’t believe we will have. I mean if Türkiye and Australia cannot agree on something, it’s not realistic to expect 196 countries [at the COP] to agree on the same thing.”

Australia’s COP31 team pointed Climate Home News to a speech given by Bowen at the mid-year Bonn climate talks, in which he said: “Australia and Türkiye are working together seamlessly and with one goal.”

The oceans conference in Trabzon, organised by the COP31 presidency, issued a statement on Thursday saying that under Türkiye’s COP31 Presidency, and “in close cooperation” with Australia as President of Negotiations, “we aim to advance action on ocean and seas towards COP31 in Antalya, including through engagement with the Pacific at the Pre-COP”.

Electrification goal to reduce fossil fuels

On other topics, Kurum told reporters that, while the COP31 Action Agenda does not feature any explicit initiatives on transitioning away from fossil fuels, its flagship goal to promote the electrification of economies – through measures like heat pumps and electric vehicles – would “lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and contribute to the clean transition”.

“What we want is to decrease the emissions, and for that we need to use clean energy, and for that we need to make electrification more widespread. And if you do that, automatically [you will] reduce the use of fossil fuels,” he said on the sidelines of the Trabzon oceans conference. He added that COP31 would “build on” the COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification

Asked by Climate Home News about a request by the government of Nepal for an emergency grant from the UN’s new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage to help recovery from its recent devastating glacial flood, Kurum said he would be “pleased” if the fund supported the South Asian nation.

On August 31, Nepal’s finance and environment ministers asked the fund’s board to take a special decision to disburse post-disaster support for the first time, a call backed by developing-country board members. On September 9, the board’s co-chairs responded in a letter saying they were “engaging with the FRLD board to address your urgent request as rapidly as possible”.

Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats

Asked how he would respond to a UN scientific assessment this month that the world will exceed its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and must then work to bring it back down, Kurum said he accepted that the data shows that keeping to 1.5C is no longer possible. He added that limiting warming to “around 1.5C” would be a success.

Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said his team will “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society.

With demonstrations temporarily banned, over 200 human rights and environmental activists were arrested before and during the NATO military alliance summit in Türkiye’s capital Ankara in January.

Kurum sought to reassure climate campaigners, however. “Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said.

The post Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations