The AKO Foundation Trustees have become increasingly concerned by the effect of the changing climate on current and future generations and on global biodiversity. While acknowledging that they might have done so earlier, in 2019 they initiated a third principal strand of grant-making, under the category heading ‘Climate’. By flying, driving and so on the Trustees do not live a carbon-neutral life, and would not wish to imply that they do. Nevertheless, they believe it is better to do something than nothing. Accordingly, they seek to support charitable entities which they believe will have significant and lasting impact.
Several of the Foundation’s beneficiaries within this Climate category are themselves re-granting organisations. The Foundation is thereby able to benefit from their research, scale and networks, which in turn benefit, in many cases, from the experience and expertise of other major funders. The Foundation has also been able to take advantage of the knowledge and advice offered by the Climate Leadership Initiative.
Having developed a portfolio of beneficiaries within this field, the Trustees now focus their grant-making in three sub-categories: ‘coal-to-clean’, carbon disclosure, and natural solutions. Although these are widely used terms, this classification is somewhat artificial; in practice, many of these organisations work across more than one of these three sub-categories.
AKO Foundation support since 2024
Carbon Mapper (CM) uses satellites and related technology to detect, pinpoint, quantify and track global methane and carbon dioxide emissions, subsequently making this data available to the public. Working in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other partners, CM launched its first satellite in August 2024. CM’s objective is to provide sustained monitoring of up to 90% of methane and carbon dioxide super-emitters globally.
Studies have shown that a relatively small number of high-emission sources can have a disproportionate impact on regional methane emissions. Carbon Mapper provides more frequent monitoring to identify and address these sources which in turn leads to quicker and more efficient reduction in methane and CO2 emissions.
AKO Foundation support since 2020
Client Earth is a UK charity that uses legal advocacy, advice and, where necessary, litigation in order to ensure that government policies and corporate investment behaviours comply with existing environmental, energy markets and state aid legislation in countries around the world.
AKO Foundation support since 2019
Energy Foundation China (EFC) is the largest climate-related grantmaker operating in China. Dedicated to facilitating China’s sustainable energy development, and working closely with a wide range of both public and private sector bodies, EFC acts as regrantor, facilitator, and strategic adviser. Its Beijing-based staff support policy research, the development of new standards, capacity building, and dissemination of best practices across multiple sectors of the economy, for example in key areas such as transport electrification, cooling efficiency, power sector reform, and green finance.
AKO Foundation support since 2020
Founded in 2008, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) is a strategic re-granter whose aims are to promote climate and energy policies that will reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, and to help Europe play a stronger international leadership role in mitigating climate change. It undertakes research and technical analysis and strategic communications, convenes partnerships between policy-makers and other representative groups, and co-ordinates high-level political and diplomatic action.
The Foundation provides unrestricted support to ECF; and has also made grants to the Pooled Fund on International Energy (PIE), a re-granting entity within ECF, towards shifting both the power and steel sectors from coal to clean.
AKO Foundation support since 2021
Foundation for International Law for the Environment (FILE) was established to accelerate legal action globally to address the crises in climate and biodiversity. Through a combination of grant-making and in-house legal expertise, FILE collaborates with partners in countries around the world that seek to drive legal innovation and to bring high impact legal action and precedent-setting cases. Rather than bringing cases itself, FILE aims to promote successful legal outcomes through access to key research, strategic communications, campaign alignment, and capacity building.
AKO Foundation support since 2023
Although short-lived (emissions begin to dissipate in a matter of years), methane has an outsized impact on the climate because it has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its lifetime in the atmosphere. Not only is methane responsible for nearly half of the warming experienced today, but emissions continue to trend upwards.
Accordingly, Global Methane Hub was created in 2022 to accelerate action by governments, civil society, researchers, investors, and the private sector to reduce methane emissions rapidly and systemically – in particular, in the sectors largely responsible for methane emissions: agriculture, energy, and waste operations. The Foundation has made its largest grant to date in the Climate field in support of this urgent work.
AKO Foundation support since 2024
The Sunrise Project (TSP) is a global network of independent organisations which seek to catalyse systemic change in the financial sector to drive finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy as quickly as possible. Sitting at the intersection of social movements and philanthropy, TSP has developed a ‘directed network’ model that supports networks of people and organisations to work together to achieve large-scale change that wouldn’t have been possible by individual organisations acting alone.
To achieve this, TSP analyses the economic and social systems that drive the climate crisis, designs strategies to create systemic change, and acts as a re-granter to partner organisations to jointly pursue strategic interventions to hasten the transition from fossil fuels.
AKO Foundation support since 2019
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a global environmental disclosure mechanism. CDP gathers and analyses a comprehensive collection of reported environmental data, with the aim of making environmental reporting and risk management a business norm.
CDP requests information on climate risks and low carbon opportunities from the world’s largest companies on behalf of over 700 financial institutions representing a quarter of all global financial assets. It has recently expanded to new areas such as biodiversity, plastics and oceans, recognising the interconnectedness of nature and the earth’s systems.
Now, companies representing two-thirds of global market capitalisation – from 130 countries – disclose critical environmental data through CDP. Within two years of an investor request, companies disclosing through CDP reduce their direct emissions by 7-10%.
AKO Foundation support since 2022
Climate Arc’s ambition is to see global capital flows aligned with global climate goals. Through regranting, it assists participants in financial markets to incorporate climate science-based data into investment decisions and corporate transition plans; and it supports organisations that produce the raw data and analytics, anchored in climate science.
AKO Foundation support since 2019
The Basecamp Explorer Foundation (BEF) is the charitable arm of a Norwegian sustainable tourism business, which operates in the Arctic and in Kenya.
In Kenya, Basecamp has had a long association with tribal chiefs in the Maasai Mara region; by collaborating with the local communities, BEF seeks to halt the diminution of the region’s wildlife.. The Foundation’s support has been used to lease, from local families, corridors of land that are critical for wildlife migrations; and also to contribute towards the capital cost of a new educational entity, the Wildlife Tourism College of Maasai Mara, which will train local people in the tourism and hospitality industries.
AKO Foundation support since 2020
Introduced to the Foundation through the Give Back programme in 2020, Cool Earth is an environmental charity that works with rainforest communities to halt deforestation and its impact on climate change.
AKO Foundation support since 2020
Conservation International (CI) seeks to protect the earth’s natural assets by promoting sustainable economic growth and climate resilience.
The Foundation funds a project whereby CI works with women in Kenya and South Africa to assist them in the sustainable management of their rangelands. Rangelands (grasslands, savannah and shrub lands) cover nearly half the Earth’s land surface and provide livelihoods to 180 million people globally, including more than 20 million pastoralists in Africa. For certain African communities, restoration and sustainable management of this land is essential to lift them out of poverty and to provide them with water, food and jobs. In addition, rangelands play an important role in ecological processes across Africa, forming important water catchment areas in dryland countries.
AKO Foundation support new in 2025
Farm Africa was founded in 1985 in response to the famine in Ethiopia and since then has established itself as a trusted partner to smallholder farmers in five countries across East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, DR Congo, and Tanzania). Farm Africa works to reduce poverty and hunger by helping farmers, agribusinesses, and rural communities to grow their incomes while protecting the environment. Farm Africa’s experience has shown that with access to the right inputs such as improved seeds, training on sustainable agricultural practices, and access to finance and markets, farmers can increase yields and household incomes even in the face of climate change. Increased productivity reduces the need to expand farming land, which reduces deforestation and in turn reduces carbon emissions.
AKO Foundation support since 2021
Global Greengrants Fund and its affiliate in the US are re-granting entities, using a widespread network of expert advisers around the world to offer micro-grants to community organisations working in the fields of climate justice, healthy ecosystems and other environmental causes. The Foundation made a 3-year grant to be used towards re-granting in agroecology, a practice and science that uses ecological concepts and principles in the design and management of sustainable agricultural ecosystems, thus empowering local communities to lever traditional knowledge, local seed production, local consumption of food, and crop diversification.
AKO Foundation support since 2019
Live Ocean is an NGO based in New Zealand, working to protect and preserve the world’s oceans, and in particular the oceans around New Zealand. It funds marine research and the transition of research data and conclusions into ocean health action; and it uses sailing events globally to promote ocean-friendly behaviour.
AKO Foundation support new in 2025
Norway’s largest and oldest outdoor recreation council, representing 29 municipalities and several counties around the Oslofjord. Since its founding in 1933, it has acquired and managed over 20,000 hectares of public coastal land, operates a network of more than 60 kystled (coastal trail) cabins, and works to protect natural areas, ensure public access, and promote sustainable outdoor activities like coastal hiking, kayaking, and environmental education
AKO Foundation support since 2021
Working in over 80 countries and territories, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) works to protect the land and water that supports life and seeks to combat climate change through using natural resources to reduce, mitigate and offset carbon emissions.
In 2024 the Foundation made a grant towards the ‘Natural Climate Solutions’ strand of TNC’s work. Natural climate solutions offer immediate and cost-effective ways to tackle the climate crisis while also addressing biodiversity loss and supporting human health and livelihoods. Practically, this involves improving forest management to help forest owners increase the carbon stored in their trees; reducing fertiliser use for fewer greenhouse gas emissions and restoring coastal wetlands to sequester carbon in submerged soil. These natural solutions could contribute up to a third of the emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
AKO Foundation support since 2022
WRI has convened a group of donors, including the Foundation, to launch the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), a pan-African platform for advancing forest landscape restoration during this current critical decade. Endorsed by the African Union in 2015, AFR100 comprises 31 African governments committed to begin restoring at least 100 million hectares by 2030. The project works through local entrepreneurs and social enterprises, who may derive a commercial as well as ecological benefit from tree-planting and reforestation.