Sustainable Development

Advancing solutions to climate change

  • Ceres helps mobilize investors, companies, and public interest groups for a sustainable world, as well as to integrate the risks of climate change into their decision-making.
  • Sustainable Development
    The 2030 Challenge is an initiative calling on the global architecture and building community to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The Better World Fund is leading the fight for America's farms, forests, and ranches to provide 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, by 2025: 25x'25.

Program Guidelines

The Sustainable Development program advances global stewardship that is ecologically based, economically sound, socially just, culturally appropriate, and consistent with intergenerational equity. Human activity is causing global warming, rapid loss of biodiversity, and accelerating degradation of Earth’s life support systems. With the recognition that the impact of unchecked climate change threatens all other conservation efforts, the program focuses its grantmaking on advancing solutions to climate change.

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Funding Strategies

Featured Grantees

Young oysters are growing on this recycled oyster shell in New York Harbor as part of the Billion Oyster Project's habitat monitoring. (Courtesy of Peter Malinowski/BOP)

New York Harbor Foundation, Inc.

The Port of Shenzen in Guangdong province is one of the world's fastest growing and busiest ports. It handles a variety of transportation types including ships, trucks, and cargo handling equipment. (Photo cc-by Chris.)

Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

News and updates

Sustainable Development

Rockefeller Brothers Fund Joins $4 Billion Pledge to Combat Climate Change

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has joined with 28 other foundations and individual philanthropists to commit a collective $4 billion over the next five years to combat climate change.
Sustainable Development

A Net-Zero Energy Future is Within Reach

RBF Trustee Joseph Pierson captures the optimism along the Pacific coast that not only is a carbon-neutral future attainable, but that a responsible energy policy and a robust economy are by no means mutually exclusive.
Sustainable Development, Mission-Aligned Investing

What is Mission-Aligned Investing? Two Minutes with Valerie Rockefeller

In this short video, Valerie Rockefeller, the chair of the board of trustees, describes how our mission-aligned investment strategy has evolved and deepened, from divesting from fossil fuel holdings to investing in clean and renewable technologies.
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