Climate change does not affect everyone equally. The people facing some of its greatest impacts are often those who have contributed least to the crisis and had the least power over the decisions that created it.

That is reason enough to care about justice, but there is another reason too – climate justice isn’t only fair. It makes us better at solving the problem, because the people closest to the impacts often hold knowledge, experience and solutions that the rest of us need. A serious response to climate change means making sure they have the power and resources to lead.

For Groundswell, that means paying attention to who is heard, who makes decisions, who gets resourced and whose knowledge shapes what comes next.
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First Nations justice is climate strategy

This country is home to the world’s oldest continuing cultures. Across tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have developed and passed on ways of knowing and caring for Country that are deeply relational, adaptive and place-based.

That knowledge endures because it lives in community. It is carried between generations and grounded in responsibility to land, water, culture and one another. In a climate-stressed world, this is not simply something to honour – it is knowledge we need.

First Nations leadership offers practical ways of understanding fire, water, ecosystems, food, adaptation and resilience. It also offers something broader: a way of thinking about our relationship with the natural world that starts with responsibility rather than extraction.

Through our grantmaking, we see First Nations organisations bringing forward climate solutions grounded in Country, community, culture and generations of knowledge – work with lessons far beyond the communities leading it.

Sometimes that means stopping a new gas project or protecting a river. Sometimes it means cultural burning, restoring ecosystems, reviving language, passing knowledge between generations or strengthening community governance. 

These things are not adjacent to climate action. They are part of it.
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Caring for Country helped us go deeper

These values were built into Groundswell from the beginning. Then a few years into Groundswell’s story, we brought together First Nations people in our giving community to ask how we could better support First Nations climate leadership. Their message challenged us – we couldn’t simply ask First Nations organisations to fit into a grantmaking system designed without them.

That conversation led to Caring for Country – a First Nations-led program built around trust, cultural authority and long-term relationships. Running from 2021–2024, it supported more than 40 First Nations-led initiatives across Australia and the Pacific.

The process changed too. Traditional applications gave way to conversations. Funding was flexible. Relationships took precedence over rigid reporting. Rather than prescribing solutions, we backed work already being led by communities themselves.
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Climate justice runs through our grantmaking

After three years, our Caring for Country grants program evolved into Just Futures Collab, a new First Nations giving platform founded by Tishiko King.

The lessons of this program continues to shape Groundswell’s broader approach – from the organisations we seek out and the expertise we bring into decision-making, to how we think about what effective climate action looks like.

Climate justice and frontline leadership are embedded in our funding framework. We back First Nations-led climate action, Pacific-led advocacy and other work that builds power in communities most affected by climate change and inequality.

It also shapes how we give – listening before arriving with the answer, valuing lived and cultural knowledge, reducing unnecessary reporting and giving organisations room to adapt as circumstances change.

We are continuously committed to listening, learning and evolving our practises, because we know, one of the smartest things we can do in a changing climate is recognise where knowledge and leadership already exist and make sure the people who hold them have the resources and power to lead.

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This is ongoing work

Climate justice isn’t something we can declare done. It asks us to keep looking at our own practices – who holds power, whose knowledge we value and whether the way money moves reflects the change we want that money to create.

We expect to keep learning.

But one principle has stayed with us from the beginning: solidarity is a long-term commitment. And one of the most powerful things philanthropy can do is recognise where knowledge, leadership and solutions already exist – then help put more resources and power in the hands of the people who hold them.

Because the way we give should reflect the future we’re working towards.