"Our hope is that CIFF’s journey will be useful for all
who aim to make development more impactful."

The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation aims to improve the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries. A report from UNICEF UK, Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility , articulates the direct connection between climate and the future of these children. In recognition of this fact, CIFF has established a Special Initiative on Climate Change to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to dangerous levels of human interference with the climate system.

Avoiding the worst of climate change means taking action urgently across every sector of the economy. Given that no economy has yet become a low-carbon economy, the world is still learning - and yet the pace of change must be accelerated. CIFF wants to work with ambitious leaders in government, business and civil society to find out what works. In our target sectors and geographies, we hope to build capacity to identify, implement, evaluate, share, replicate and scale best practice.

We believe that transformation will most easily begin with the identification of synergies between acting on climate and acting to achieve other societal objectives, such as job creation, the protection of human health and food security. Where such ‘co-benefits’ can be clearly identified, they increase the value of emissions reductions beyond their environmental value and enlist new champions. By focusing on actions that achieve co-benefits, CIFF hopes to demonstrate what we call “high-value decarbonisation”, prioritising not just the lowest cost emissions reductions but those which can improve human well-being and marshal broad support on the long march to implementation.

The mission for the Climate Change Initiative is therefore the following:

Recognising that children living in poverty in developing countries have the greatest vulnerability to climate change, CIFF aims to accelerate high value decarbonisation by supporting and replicating large-scale leadership efforts.

We have chosen three areas where large-scale emissions reductions are possible that will deliver co-benefits:

• Roadmaps: (1) national growth strategies and development plans and (2) energy system transformation (strategy approved)
• Megacities: (1) urban design and infrastructure projects and (2) air quality management (strategy awaiting approval)
• Land use: (1) supply chains and (2) agricultural practices (strategy still under development)

As the direct impacts of climate change on children are difficult to quantify, CIFF uses emissions outcomes as a proxy for the impact on children. In order to focus on the nearer term impacts of climate change, we use 20-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) instead of the conventional 100-year GWP. We complement this assessment of abatement potential with other indicators to assess the contribution of our funding and of our grantees. While we support the introduction of ambitious climate policy, we are also seeking to strengthen implementation where there is a high value in practical demonstration and a high probability of success.