China

The post-pandemic world faces the compounded threats of worsening climate change, accelerating biodiversity loss, and deteriorating conditions for human well-being. As of 2024, the United Nations observed limited progress on nearly half of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with signs of stagnation or regression on one-third of the goals. Earth’s supporting systems have become so strained that well-intentioned adjustments in one area can lead to adverse effects in others. Although rapid decarbonization of the energy system can help stabilize the climate, changes in fuel distribution and accessibility can complicate efforts to reduce poverty and social inequality. Similarly, programs aimed at restoring nature may conflict with initiatives focused on increasing food security. In a world already on the brink of environmental and climate catastrophe, numerous dilemmas and even more complex challenges abound.

The balancing act of steering the planet back toward sustainability is impossible without the participation of China, the world’s second-largest economy, with nearly one-fifth of the global population. The country is pivotal in almost every planetary system: the trajectory of its greenhouse gas emissions can make or break any international scheme to stabilize the climate system; its vast manufacturing capacity underpins complex supply chain systems that produce goods essential to modern life; the consumption patterns of its rising middle class can shape the future of life-supporting ecosystems worldwide. However, China’s relevance goes beyond mere scale. The entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people is a wellspring of innovation and affordable solutions to global challenges. Furthermore, China’s policies and experiments in recent years, aimed at balancing economic development with environmental protection, offer valuable lessons, with particular applicability to the Global South.

In this place of systemic importance to global ecological health and human well-being, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s (RBF’s) grantmaking seeks to foster new ideas, connections, and forms of organization that can help China and the global community address the proliferating sustainability challenges. The Fund supports organizations at the intersection of concerns about climate, biodiversity, food security, and community development. It supports the search for insights into the complex interactions between nature and human activities, encourages interventions that produce co-benefits and synergies across climate, food, energy, and other systems, and facilitates dialogues that break down silos to promote collaborations across national and systemic boundaries.

The RBF established its China-focused grantmaking program in 2005. From its inception, the RBF’s work in China has been driven by a fundamental belief in the wisdom, creativity, and resourcefulness of the Chinese people. The current program reflects the global emphasis on an integrated approach to environmental issues and China’s green development philosophy in recent years. It builds on the RBF’s history of philanthropy in East and Southeast Asia and continues more than a century of Rockefeller family philanthropy in China, which includes the founding of the Peking Union Medical College in 1917.