A biotech company in Tanzania that upscales organic waste into sustainable fertilizer… A Ugandan business that uses nanotechnology to help growers keep produce fresh for an extra month… An Ivory Coast-based research center that helps protect crops from flooding—one of the most difficult and costly issues affecting farmers in the Global South… What do all these projects—NovFeed, Karpolax, and IRRI-AfricaRice—have in common?
They’re sustainable, technologically savvy agricultural solutions with a specific focus on Africa. But they’re also the winners of the Milken-Motsepe Innovation Prize, a $2 million annual distinction awarded to creative thinkers by the Milken Institute in partnership with the Motsepe Foundation. And that prize, hatched in 2021 to further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is part of the Milken Institute’s increased focus on the environment.
The nonprofit, non-partisan think tank is built around the idea of helping people to build meaningful lives. It pursues this through work in finance, philanthropy, and health. So, in many ways, climate is a natural fit. But not only does the environment make sense in terms of focus (it’s the first Milken Institute topic which reaches across all three of its work streams), but the timing is very, very right.
Everyone knows the climate is in trouble. The race to decarbonize economies due to global warming is on, and new investment—to the tune of $90 trillion globally by 2050—is needed. Yet traditional solutions are increasingly faltering. President Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement in January (though the withdrawal won’t be official until New Year’s Eve). And in March an official statement that the administration “rejected and denounced” the UN’s SDGs, which feature not only climate concerns themselves but whose realization is dependent on environmental crises being addressed in other areas as well. (Poverty, for example, which the SDGs aim to end, is affected by climate.) As a result, says Dan Carol, senior director of the Milken Institute Finance team and leader of climate work across the organization, a “second track” of investor-led financing innovation is crucial. This track must not only bridge the gap between investors and frontline communities and be organized “around deal flow and actual outcomes,” Carol says. “It also must prioritize outcomes over orthodoxy. How do we partner respectfully with existing groups and existing players and bring together serious investors and community leaders who are ready to build on their own? We’re trying to organize this new, added climate capital acceleration track both in the U.S. and internationally.”
To build this track the Institute is catalyzing, overseeing, and creating data-driven research projects and reports, innovative programs around finance and food systems, and facilitating connections at events like its annual Global Conference. At its core, the approach can be broken into three main strands:
Making sure funding gets where it’s most needed, and quickly—and that it’s sustainable and impactful once it arrives.
Funds often don’t reach the areas and communities that need them the most. To help, many members of the Milken Institute’s Global Capital Markets Advisory Council (GCMAC) have participated in this programming to learn more about the new and innovative ways they can allocate capital to maximize returns. GCMAC—a consortium of Chief Investment Officers from the world’s largest single-pools of capital that together represent over $28 trillion in assets under management (AUM)—is a peer network geared towards uncovering investment opportunities and aims to break down silos between types of investors: those that run pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, and more.
Finding innovative climate solutions to invest in is an ongoing discussion among GCMAC members. As part of this work, the Milken Institute joined a new initiative at COP29 to accelerate climate capital deployment with the CREO Family Office Syndicate and the Investor Leadership Network. This effort focuses on overcoming key friction points to build a stronger pipeline of environmentally sustainable projects.
Also of note: The Institute’s recent report “Priorities for Strategic Climate and Environmental Philanthropy.” Surprisingly, the report notes, only 2% of giving globally goes to climate mitigation. (This is an impressive increase of 20% over 2024, but still nowhere near what the sector needs to scale solutions.) The paper, based on 50 interviews with environmental scientists, impact investors, and activists all over the world, aims to help both beginner philanthropists and more seasoned ones to give in a way that maximizes their impact.
Creating new ways for funds to be deployed, from fostering innovative partnerships to creating new capital structures and business models.
The Milken Institute’s Financial Innovations Labs are its signature, applied research projects. To date, they’ve helped disseminate $3 billion in innovative financing across sectors. The Labs focused on environmental sustainability have led to increased use of green bonds, created recommendations for green infrastructure, and explored solutions in industries including electric vehicles, renewable energy, and alternative fuel.
Another important program is Pathways to Capital. Under its rubric is the 10,000 Communities Initiative, which focuses on climate-smart infrastructure and energy transition projects. Carol describes its mission thus: “How do you help 10,000 communities over the next three to five years—many of whom are underserved, rural, and essentially forgotten—access the capacity and capital to turn their one-page idea into something that is grant-worthy and investable?” To help, the Institute launched its Community Infrastructure Center, a U.S.-centric platform connecting community project sponsors to public and private capital resources, developers and technical assistance experts. To date: 1500 organizations have roughly 400 projects moving through the system.
Designing solutions for food systems in a way that prioritizes resilience, nutrition and sustainability.
Food systems are a powerful lever for addressing climate issues, not only because they contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but also because they hold significant promise to enhance resilience and support healthy longevity. However, despite food systems being responsible for one-third of GHG emissions, funding to address the impact of food systems on the climate has been sorely lacking. Only 3% of public money is earmarked for this arena; 20 to 50 times that would be necessary to adequately address the problem. Through elevating the intrinsic connection between food systems, climate change, and health, the Milken Institute’s Feeding Change is working to catalyze a more nutritious and resilient food system for all.
The above is only a sampling of the Institute’s work. More projects and programs not only exist but are created on a rolling basis. Often, they involve serendipitous meetings, alliances and even entrepreneurial projects born out of the 200 events annually that the Milken Institute facilitates—and those that it visits. This year, the latter will include COP30 in Brazil where the institute will host its Global Investors’ Symposium. This event brings together senior executives, investors and policymakers across sectors to analyze geopolitics and macroeconomics and brainstorm ways to deploy capital for effective change. Also on the docket: our Techonomy Impact: Power in Progress event, which will be held during this month’s Climate Week NYC. No doubt these stops will add to its process of refining approaches and solutions.
But the Institute’s goals are fundamentally in place and progressing. Says Emily Musil, managing director of Strategic Philanthropy Environmental and Social Innovation team: “The Milken Institute magic is that people here can decide ‘I want to do something’ and then actually do it. Mike Milken himself will say, ‘Sure, we’re a think tank but we’re also an action tank.’ We love talking, communication, community. But you’ve got to find practical solutions—to make things happen. That’s what we do.”
