CharityWatch Top-Rated Environmental Charities Announced Ahead of UN Climate Change Conference

ATTENTION: The charities listed in this alert were Top-Rated by CharityWatch at the time of its publication. CharityWatch updates our ratings throughout the year. To see if a particular charity is currently Top-Rated, please click on its name, below.

The UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, will take place October 31, 2021 through November 12, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Goals announced for this conference include:

1) Secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach by encouraging countries to accelerate the phase-out of coal; curtail deforestation; speed up the switch to electric vehicles; encourage investment in renewables. 

2) Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats by working together to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to protect and restore ecosystems and build defenses, warning systems, and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods, and lives. 

3) Mobilize finance to deliver on the first two goals by encouraging developed countries to make good on their promises to mobilize at least $100 billion in climate finance per year.

4) Work together to deliver on finalizing the Paris Rulebook (the detailed rules that make the Paris Agreement operational), and accelerating action to tackle the climate crisis through collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society. 

"As countries begin to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic, we must take the historic opportunity to tackle climate change at the same time--to build back better, and greener. We can deliver green recoveries across the globe that bring good jobs, trillions in investment and ground-breaking new technology. And we must. To keep the temperature of the planet under control--limiting its increase to 1.5 degrees--the science dictates that by the second half of the century, we should be producing less carbon than we take out of the atmosphere. This is what reaching 'net zero' means." -- Alok Sharma, COP President-Designate

Top-Rated charity National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) warns that "research suggests that current international commitments would increase greenhouse gas emissions by about 16 percent by 2030 compared to 2010, far short of the roughly 45 percent reduction in carbon emissions that is required to keep the world at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming." 

The president of another CharityWatch Top-Rated charity, Nature Conservancy, describes the climate crisis as an "emergency," stating that we collectively "have years, not decades, to address these existential threats." 

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which currently receives an "A-" rating from CharityWatch, called for the COP26 2021 conference to be postponed due to concerns over the current state of the COVID19 pandemic. Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS, communicated in a press release on September 7, 2021 that "UCS is joining a coalition of diverse civil society groups in calling for the postponement of COP26 because it is clear that the international climate talks, if they proceed as currently planned, cannot meet science-based public health guidelines in an equitable way." 

CharityWatch "A+" rated World Resources Institute has published an impressive research hub on its website to keep the public apprised of current climate action and provide suggestions on what the public can do to forward the cause of addressing climate change. 

For a complete list of CharityWatch Top-Rated Environmental Charities, please visit our Top-Rated charities page.