Key Findings:

• 30+ years of multilateral focus on climate-health offers fertile ground for progress
• 4 consecutive G20 Presidencies present a critical period for South-led climate action
• 13 viable strategies for advancing climate-proof health for all in the Global South

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The strategy, laid out in this new Rockefeller Foundation analysis of data from 190 countries, can keep global warming to acceptable limits this century while sparking a revolution in energy access among the 3.6 billion who now lack steady power.

But success demands swift cooperation among both richer and poorer countries to ensure technological advances all around.

Done right, the world can combat climate change, transform the energy space, and dramatically widen economic opportunity for its neediest populations. This sustained surge of global teamwork is the one feasible path forward.

Should the world fail to cooperate or lurch deeper into disarray, the alternate paths lead to far gloomier—even catastrophic—outcomes.

This report helps blaze a clear path for concerted action. But we have no time to waste.

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ZGF has provided catalytic capital during an increasingly challenging global macro environment, addressing the world’s most pressing challenges including climate change, financial inclusion, access to essential services, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The Fund has reached beyond mainstream strategies to target new impact themes, for which there are few sources of seed capital yet have potential to deliver significant positive economic, social, or environmental impact.

Launched in 2019 in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and its flagship Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3), the ZGF deploys flexible, patient and risk tolerant capital to catalyze private investment into strategies that address the SDGs. The Fund’s mandate is to support innovative products and structures that are replicable and scalable and demonstrate how new solutions may drive needed financing for global good.

In 2022, ZGF made two new investments: Seedstars International Ventures II and Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV. Both investments highlight the importance of tech-enabled companies and disruptive technology for delivering impact. Seedstars provides venture capital and training to tech-enabled start-up companies across emerging and frontier markets.

Horizon Capital, Ukraine’s leading private equity firm, focuses on export-oriented technology companies with operations that have proven resilient during the ongoing conflict. Their Growth Fund IV supports local enterprises that provide employment opportunities in Ukraine and neighboring Moldova.

The Zero Gap Fund: 2022 State of the Portfolio report provides details about the Fund’s investments and the impact they have been able to achieve. As the Fund matures, we are seeing the power of catalytic capital to mobilize private investment into these impact-driven strategies. Innovative financial solutions like those advanced by ZGF are designed to be replicated and scaled. These and other ground-breaking financing solutions developed through the Fund will play a critical role in channeling meaningful private capital flows into investments that deliver positive impact to underserved and vulnerable people, communities, and ecosystems.

Maria Kozloski
Senior Vice President, Innovative Finance
The Rockefeller Foundation

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During the 2022 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogues, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Rockefeller Foundation gathered experts and stakeholders from climate, agriculture, food security, and humanitarian backgrounds to discuss a bold vision for a 21st Century of zero hunger in a healthier and more equitable world. The resulting white paper, “Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World,” reflects a summary of their views and offers a framework to reimagine a hunger-free world.

This white paper is the first of four reports from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Nutrition Security portfolio, led by Catherine Bertini, former Executive Director of the World Food Programme and 2003 World Food Prize Laureate. The white paper identifies and analyzes three major obstacles—silos, myopic priorities, and top-down decision-making—and outlines solutions that address these challenges and make our food systems more sustainable, equitable and nourishing.

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The report, “Anticipate and localize: Leveraging humanitarian funding to create more sustainable food systems,” identifies crucial reforms to humanitarian food aid that would improve response to crises, avert future crisis, and help build resilient, sustainable food systems.

It is the second of four reports from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Nutrition Security portfolio, led by Catherine Bertini, former Executive Director of the World Food Programme and 2003 World Food Prize Laureate. The Report Chair is Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director of UNICEF. They draw on decades of experience in the global humanitarian and development sectors.

In addition, the report is informed by the Foundation-sponsored Convening Group on Funding for Sustainable Food Security, which brought together nearly two dozen experts in food insecurity and food aid from around the world, including people with lived experience, to examine how to best mobilize and leverage funding to ensure food security for all. Three convenings held in late 2022 generated an abundance of creative and provocative ideas to overcome the severe shortcomings in the global governance and delivery of food aid.

The report identifies those shortcomings as a lack of effective anticipation of need; a lack of localization; and a failure to break silos and join the funding “dots.” Its recommendations address each of those shortcomings with specific, concrete actions that should be taken now and over the next seven-to-ten years to reset the world on the path of food security for all through aligning humanitarian aid and global development to build resilient and sustainable food systems.

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This white paper summarizes the major themes and takeaways from the summit — including how to break the “boom and bust” cycles of emergency response, how to translate interest in EIDs into R&D for effective vaccines, and how to ensure that equitable access to those lifesaving technologies.

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The 2022 Menino Survey of Mayors details perspectives shared by a representative sample of 118 mayors leading U.S. cities with populations of more than 75,000 residents.

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The group is comprised of Foundation grantees, including epidemiologists and academic researchers from U.S.-based institutions in Houston, Louisville, Phoenix, Tulsa and Atlanta. They all recognize wastewater surveillance as a powerful public health tool that is:

• Timely – wastewater surveillance can provide early indications of community transmission of Covid-19 and of emerging variants. It is often able to do this before clinical data emerge, because people often don’t seek care unless they are severely ill.
• Cost-effective – wastewater sampling can often be done at a fraction of the cost of clinical testing. Variant detection at a population level versus a single clinical sample is a more efficient approach.
• Equitable – as a passive and anonymous monitoring system, wastewater can provide a more equitable snapshot of health in the community. Everyone contributes, so even populations that lack access to quality health care and may be overlooked by other health data systems are included.

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