Large dams are disastrous for freshwater ecosystems. From preventing salmon migrations, to flooding niche river ecosystems, to blocking nutrient-rich sediment from getting downstream, hydropower is a catastrophe for wildlife. Yet currently, hydropower supplies more than half of our renewable energy. Isn’t cutting our dependence on fossil fuels worth the biodiversity cost of new dams? [...]
There is an urgent need for increased long-term funding to support effective ocean conservation action. Mainstream ocean conservation efforts struggle to halt and reverse the decline in ocean health, while the ocean’s most reliable custodians—the people and communities who have long depended on it for sustenance—have often been overlooked and disenfranchised in efforts to [...]
“The most important things in the world that need doing cannot be done by large organizations. They will be done by many, sometimes hundreds, sometimes even thousands of smaller groups.” So said Andrew Steer, CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, when the new fund made a pledge to spend $10 billon to tackle climate change. [...]
With a wave of new pledges of large grants to environmental organisations, as funders, we need to reflect on how our philanthropy can be improved. Building trust between donors and grantees plus reshaping the donor community so it can better support the organisations working on the ground are the foundations of a philosophy and [...]
Synchronicity Earth, in collaboration with Fondation Segré and Oak Foundation, is delighted to launch the Amphibian Conservation Fund, an exciting initiative to catalyse urgently needed philanthropic support for the world’s most threatened vertebrates – the amphibians. Synchronicity Earth was founded to support the most overlooked and underfunded of conservation issues [...]
Simon Ruddick is the founder and current Chairman of Albourne Partners, a major player in the financial services industry that has been providing research advice on alternative investments since 1994. The combined investments of the firm’s clients now top $500 billion. As a long-standing supporter of Synchronicity Earth, we asked Simon what lay behind [...]
Apes are our closest living cousins... In fact, we’re just a pair of chromosomes apart. Actually, we are apes. Humans and non-human apes all evolved from a common ancestor about 14 million years ago – not that long in the grand scheme of things. We are most closely related to chimps and bonobos, while gorillas [...]
Synchronicity Earth recently took part in a capacity building conference hosted at ZSL London Zoo. Katy Scholfield, our Co-Head of Programmes, was invited to speak at a session on innovative partnerships for capacity building. We believe in providing long-term, flexible support to our partners. In many cases, this means providing support for capacity development [...]
Most people would agree that protecting the natural world for future generations should be high on our list of priorities. Yet our love of nature is not reflected in the level of philanthropic funding directed towards protecting it: less than 5 per cent of UK philanthropy is dedicated to nature conservation, a figure that [...]
Pooled funding - where several donors and foundations contribute funds to a central pot - can reduce the burden on small, local organisations who might otherwise have to use vital resources filling in multiple grant applications and writing reports for numerous different donors. In this post, Synchronicity Earth CEO Catherine Bryan explains how a [...]