Can Gulf Philanthropy Support Climate Action?
The old order is crumbling, and taking billions in development funding with it. Seismic cuts to global aid, paired with a deepening legitimacy crisis in how we organise for social change and the green transition, have left few organisations unscathed. Following a busy year for climate diplomacy and international development finance, the signs are unmistakable: our geopolitical order has shifted. But every collapse creates openings, and some unlikely players may need to step more firmly into the spotlight.
As Western donors retreat and European and North American philanthropies scramble to find their footing, can a new power bloc from the Global South rise to fill the void? And could Gulf philanthropies lead the charge?
The accurate scale and size of the philanthropic muscle in the region is little known, but all indicators suggest that regional philanthropy is a force to be reckoned with. Recent analysis on just the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – estimates philanthropic giving of over $210 billion. In the latest survey of global giving, three countries in the Middle East made it to the top ten. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also featured as international leaders in giving to transnational causes, with one-third of respondents in both countries donating beyond their borders.
This is part of a picture in which high-net-worth individuals and families from the Global South are rapidly growing in influence, and with it, signalling a shift in global philanthropic dynamics. For example, Asian billionaires are expected to account for more than half of the world’s newest high-net-worth individuals by 2028. The Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society notes that the potential to give in Asia, where some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities live, is at least 11 times more than what is currently donated. The number of billionaires grew sevenfold from 1993 to 2020.
In the Gulf, where nearly 60 percent of the region’s population is under the age of 30, new generations of wealth holders will be redefining the philanthropic landscape in the very near future. Many of these new philanthropists are already showing a greater affinity to climate and energy, and as Badr Jafar, founder of the Pearl Initiative also described, the region’s philanthropic future fits within an overall context in which an estimated $70-90 trillion in global wealth will change hands to millennials and Gen X in the coming decades, with $26 trillion of that in Asia and Africa alone.
For better or worse, since the region hosted the United Nations climate negotiations, several Gulf states have been playing a more pronounced role in green diplomacy and climate action on the international stage. Seasoned observers can see that Gulf development aid is beginning to consider global climate commitments more carefully. As part of the COP28 package, one of the world’s largest private climate investment funds, Altérra, was launched – with an initial $30 billion commitment from the UAE and a vision to mobilise $250 billion in climate solutions by 2030.
The Gulf stands at a crossroads. This is a landscape where concentrated wealth, a growing interest in international development, and a near-existential push for economic diversification can create a rare alignment of interests and resources. For the region’s philanthropies, now may be a good time to chart a new course and help guide the region's navigation of a new geopolitical era. But if Gulf philanthropies want to wield their seductive power more ambitiously, we first need to understand current giving patterns and reckon with the challenges ahead.
Seasons of Change: Rising Gulf Influence?
The Gulf’s philanthropic ecosystem has a unique history. Gulf philanthropy is, in many ways, a mirror to the state. Royal Foundations, like the King Khalid Foundation and Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation in Saudi Arabia, the Royal Foundation for Humanitarian Action in Bahrain, or Al-Maktoum Foundation in the UAE, operate in ways that closely resemble official foreign aid, and serve as ‘instruments of soft power’ or ‘philanthro-diplomacy.’ Each of these institutions has played an outsized role in supporting national development priorities, and their grantmaking has traditionally appeared to be closely aligned with government visions for social change.
Private foundations, which do not necessarily have direct connections to royal families, still broadly show the extent to which the line between the individual, the family, and the business is blurry. Family businesses in the GCC make up to an estimated 90 percent of the private sector – and this also shapes how private wealth is leveraged for philanthropy. The giving of family offices is tied to reputation and brand, and a tremendous share of giving goes untracked and is unstructured.
Instead, networks, proximity, and relationships are the main determinants shaping giving strategies.
When it comes to climate change, there is generally little data on the state of philanthropic giving in the region, and we know that growth rates are among the lowest in the world. Yet, there is a strong likelihood that some of the region’s most significant areas of focus have climate dimensions that go underreported. Too often, Arab philanthropists are missing from global conversations, especially about the changing role of philanthropy, and we need to do better at capturing their expertise.
Gulf philanthropists have had a strong historical focus on education and health, with some international work around poverty alleviation and relief. Like many of their peers in emerging economies, the tracked information on their giving doesn’t reflect their collective power or financial assets. We also know that there are tremendous transparency challenges. Owing to Islamic and cultural traditions of discretion in giving, the sector has been characterised as “notoriously low profile”. There is little standardisation of reporting. But strategic giving and experimenting with new models of grantmaking, including creative online platforms, have a more substantial presence across the region than is often acknowledged – and they are rapidly growing.
So what could this picture tell us about the future of Gulf philanthropy as the region mobilises to find its place in a new era?
Firstly, in a context where many philanthropic resources are an instrument of soft power and at times, helping lead the way for Official Development Assistance (ODA), reflecting on Gulf aid patterns and recognising that change is already afoot is one place to start. Gulf donorship has never followed a single logic, and GCC countries have had diverse journeys in how they fund, what they fund, and why – even if much of the GCC’s donor power has tilted towards mobilising private-sector involvement and social spending.
But Gulf foreign aid has also shifted, over a few decades, from a solidarity-based model to one aligned with a growing emphasis on global governance norms and humanitarianism. Gulf aid favours blended finance and commercially driven giving, with a strong focus on technological platforms and cooperation. Investment priorities and aid mirror one another. Gulf funding has also been called cautious capital, and observers describe an investment agenda paired with what’s been dubbed “bailout diplomacy.”
Second, where Gulf aid has been spent and in what forms it has taken are likely indicators of what to expect from the region’s philanthropies. In contrast to Western aid, as Abdulla N. Khoory at the Fiker Institute shows, the GCC strongly prefers bilateral giving over multilateral assistance, with only 1 to 6 percent of aid flowing through multilateral organisations in a general preference for faster deployment and direct engagement with recipients. The lion’s share of aid spending has also gone to Arab and Muslim countries, which received 62 percent of total aid between 1970 and 2008. As the Rihla Initiative’s Guide to Accelerating Gulf Climate Finance to the Global South details, Gulf states spent $15.1 billion of ODA to Global South countries in the four years from 2019 to 2022. Among the top ten GCC-supported ODA recipients, only Ethiopia and Serbia stand out as non-Muslim majority states.
Third, and much like official aid, Gulf philanthropies tend to fund issues that align with their own national development goals. Their focus has, as a result, been routinely inward, prioritising matters such as youth employment, skill building, and social protection - with more recent and growing interest in issues related to resilience and innovation. Transnationally, GCC philanthropists – often driven by broad definitions of “community” – have a larger footprint in Arab and Muslim countries and commit to issues that resonate at home as well. Emirati philanthropy, much like the UAE’s aid, has a deeper transnational reach and ambitions than many of its peers. For the UAE, which invested more than $118 billion in Africa just between 2020 and 2024, the country has set its eyes on becoming a key player in food security debates. We should have every expectation that its philanthropies will play a role in mobilising research and data to support that vision.
Networks of Trust, Tech, and Enterprise
Now that key economies in the Gulf have committed to ambitious net-zero initiatives and promise a pivot to sustainability and green investment, there are opportunities ahead for the region’s philanthropies to play a more central role in backing national agendas. Even if this transition appears slow and deeply challenging with the Gulf’s unquestionable reliance on hydrocarbons, the region is rapidly expanding its climate finance reach for many issues, especially those that shape the Gulf’s ability to feed itself. There appear to be some strategic opportunities.
“They walk the talk. Especially since COVID-19, the Gulf understands its own place in global supply chains, and they are interested in solving food and water issues,” Haifa Al Kaylani, Founder of the Arab International Women's Forum, tells me. “Sustainability is a strategic security imperative for many countries in the region. Philanthropy is an important catalyst to support social priorities.”
Now, as the younger generation of philanthropists steps into leadership, a greater degree of enterprise is further likely to take deeper hold. Indeed, given the size of the youth demographic in the Middle East, the future of Arab philanthropy will not be determined solely by large foundations. As Naila Farouky put it years ago, we need to watch a “youth population with a sense of social purpose and the ability to create their own businesses that are both financially viable and able to resolve a social challenge at scale.” This ‘impact investing’ and philanthropy ‘continuum’ has tremendous and underdeveloped potential in the region, and has been formally endorsed by several of the Gulf’s leading and state-affiliated philanthropic funds. In straightforward terms, the picture of a few royal family-affiliated foundations will unlikely be the core and exclusive defining feature of how capital is deployed, and grants allocated.
Taking Saudi Arabia as an example, a continuum between investment, enterprise, and philanthropy is worth observing. Prosperity7 Ventures, one of Saudi Arabia’s leading funds – and part of Aramco’s $2 trillion portfolio, has a focus on energy, sustainability, and digital transformation. Most notable is the country’s National Industrial Development Fund with more than $28 billion in capital. With an emphasis on startup support aligned with the country’s Vision 2030, including renewable energy, these funds have skin in the game as the country works to transform its national and regional economies.
In other words, whether philanthropies play a more central role in supporting innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems is worth watching – both in their own countries and abroad. There is tremendous untapped potential for patient capital to support innovation across sectors.
Another key connected space to watch is how far the GCC’s philanthropic sector may go in supporting the region’s rapid investment in AI infrastructure and green tech solutions. Predicted to soon emerge as the “new AI equator”, the Gulf has been aggressively working to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities and infrastructure. Saudi Arabia has committed $600 billion over four years, the UAE is adding $200 billion to its existing $1.4 trillion strategy, and Qatar is earmarking $1.2 trillion. While the market and skills are still lagging, the region is cautiously entering a new frontier, with 65 percent of organisations planning to increase their AI spending. Philanthropy should be playing a role in ensuring this AI transformation is more beneficial than harmful.
But all these trends point to a future in which Gulf philanthropists may invest in technology development, research and innovation, with an emphasis on enterprise and a commitment to backing national agendas, where mutual interests for the Gulf and its partners are front and centre. What also seems likely is a continuation of regional philanthropic practices that favour networks, personal relationships, and where trust plays a key role in grantmaking decisions.
But several challenges need to be tackled. For instance, despite immense concentrations of wealth in the region, private philanthropic organisations and family offices have been fewer in number than the volume of regional wealth, in part due to legal conditions governing how charitable foundations are founded and operate. In several countries in the region, philanthropies are explicitly prevented from working in ways that “conflict with customs and traditions” or “violate public morals.” Laws prohibit philanthropic organisations from having public advocacy interests or ‘political goals’ – and that has meant that philanthropies across the region support more service provision efforts, over the building of civil society and policy networks. There is a long record in MENA of philanthropies favouring what they perceive to be low-risk engagements, such as scholarships, university infrastructure, or humanitarian relief, with minimal investment in social movement or field-building activities. The sustainability of that model is worth questioning.
For virtually every country in the region, cross-border donations and the receipt of funds must obtain government approval, and a host of policies condition transnational giving. All these regulations need to be streamlined if regional philanthropy’s full potential can be realised.
Gulf philanthropies have built their giving on mutual trust, not transactions. In this moment of global upheaval, they have a chance to lead not just with money, but with a fundamentally different model – one that prioritises communities over donor control, and is rooted in a culturally relevant ethos of solidarity and shared strategy. But the challenges are real. As power shifts, so must the rules. We can cling to old paradigms, or we can learn together how to redefine our logic of engagement that shapes how both Gulf philanthropists and their partners determine their climate futures. The choice will define the next era of development.
Photo: Msheireb Museums
