TAI Weekly

TAI Weekly | When Climate Finance Meets Political Reality

By TAI (Role at TAI)
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TAI Weekly

April 28, 2026

Dear readers,

TAI was present at both the Skoll World Forum in Oxford and the Inaugural Ottawa Civic Space Summit last week, and both convenings offered prompts for philanthropy to reassess its role. Working with government was a recurrent talking point around Skoll sessions, making Tim Hanstad’s piece essential reading as he makes the case for greater investment in partnering with governments to improve public systems. In a complementary piece, Catherine Cheney argues that rather than financing services directly, funders should invest in the accountability and civic systems that enable governments to deliver. That was messaging oft repeated in the Ottawa conversations.

You will find many related stories in today’s Weekly, plus the funder tools, jobs, events, and our deep dive on the governance related challenges of the energy transition.

Happy reading!

TAI team

What's New

Youth activists have been arrested in Madagascar after demanding an election date be set. Gen Z protesters are increasingly worried that the new regime is no better than one they overthrew.

Eric LeCompte says the current United States administration has shown appetite for helping lower-income countries restructure their debt, a potentially significant shift in how Washington engages with the global debt crisis.

Michael Meyer of Democracy Reporting International, asks what it means to defend democracy in practice. He argues organizations should be clearer about their definitions and assumptions, and encourages more explicit positioning and greater alignment between values and action.

The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize has announced its winners, celebrating grassroots leaders whose work demonstrates that ordinary people can drive extraordinary environmental change. At the same time, the World Resources Institute highlights that while frontline environmental defenders play a critical role in protecting ecosystems, only 5% of climate policy research explicitly recognizes their contribution.

Javier Corrales examines the narrow but real path toward democratic transition in Venezuela, making the case that regime change remains both necessary and possible.

Integrity Watch has published a new Community-Based Monitoring Handbook, drawing on its work in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. The handbook offers bottom-up accountability approaches tested across sectors including health, education, infrastructure, and extractive industries.

The Center for Public Integrity in Mozambique examines the country's progress in implementing its anti-corruption commitments under the UN Convention against Corruption. It finds steady progress in building a legal framework, but flags weak enforcement and limited accountability for politically exposed persons as persistent obstacles.

Writing in Spanish, Eloy Marchán from CONNECTAS assesses what they describe as the slow erosion of democracy in Peru. Widespread public apathy and the prospect of parliamentary majorities, they argue, could steer the country toward a new right-wing authoritarian government.

Uganda's parliament is reviewing a Protection of Sovereignty Bill that would severely restrict individuals and civil society organizations from receiving international funding. Anyone deemed an "agent of a foreigner," including Ugandans receiving remittances from relatives abroad, could face up to ten years in prison if they fail to register with the state.

Following the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Tamas Scsaurszki tells Alliance magazine that civil society and philanthropy may finally be able to emerge from sixteen years of survival mode.

Asociación Ambiente y Sociedad, Dejusticia, WWF Colombia, and Universidad del Rosario report that Colombia has the legal tools to implement the Escazú Agreement, but a significant gap remains between frameworks and results on the ground. The findings coincide with the start of the agreement's fourth Conference of the Parties.

For investigative journalists, beneficial ownership data is a proven tool against corruption, but worryingly, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project finds that public registries are closing across Europe, with a key reform deadline likely to be missed, helping bad actors evade accountability.

From Our Members

OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS: President Binaifer Nowrojee reflects in The East African that while Sudan’s war is not forgotten, silence still carries a cost. A recent conference in Berlin saw renewed international calls for a ceasefire and humanitarian support, but she stresses that statements alone are not enough, urging stronger action backed by enforcement and accountability.

HEWLETT FOUNDATION: President Amber D. Miller argues that America's AI governance gap is widening and that neither government nor industry can close it alone. The piece outlines how civil society can play a meaningful role in protecting critical infrastructure and building public trust, and shares new grants aimed at strengthening AI safeguards.

ESSENTIAL READING:

In  new think piece, CoST, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative argues that while transparency commitments in infrastructure are common, their impact is rarely measured. Its Infrastructure Transparency Index, applied 20 times across 14 countries, offers a way to assess this, with a companion case study showing results across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

TOOLS AND TRENDS FOR FUNDERS

Nonprofits in conflict or closing civic space contexts face harsh conditions yet receive limited support from traditional funding models. Martha Lackritz-Peltier offers ten recommendations to better support them. You can also check out TAI's Community of Practice on resourcing civil society.

Funders broadly agree with nonprofits consistent calls for flexible, sustained support, yet multiyear general operating funding remains limited. New Center for Effective Philanthropy analysis explores reasons for the gap between intent and practice.

Helen Wong and alvin starks make the case for community-rooted intermediaries as essential infrastructure in philanthropy. They argue that those closest to the work should help shape funding decisions, and that intermediaries are a key lever for aligning resources, power, and community voice.

Andrea Levere proposes a new framing for nonprofit sustainability: enterprise capital, meaning multi-year, unrestricted funding designed not just to cover operating expenses, but to build net assets and strengthen organizations' financial positions over time.

ESSENTIAL WATCHING:

What does responsibility look like in the age of algorithms? OBSERVACOM explored this question in a virtual debate (in Spanish): “Diseño y algoritmos: El tiempo de la responsabilidad propia.” Watch the recording here.

Focused Topic of the Week

When Promises of Climate Finance Meet the Hard Math of Transition

In theory, the world knows what needs to happen: trillions of dollars in climate finance must reach the right projects, governments must break their dependence on fossil‑fuel revenues, and energy systems must shift toward cleaner, more resilient infrastructure. Delivering that is another story.

A growing body of work points to one stubborn bottleneck: the absence of clear, interoperable tools to track and manage climate finance. The Open Contracting Partnership recently laid out what it would take to build a digital platform that could follow climate‑related spending from donor to delivery, across sectors and geographies. The technology, they argue, already exists. What is missing are aligned incentives and a willingness to share data across governments, multilateral banks, and private actors. Without that, promises of “climate‑smart” investment risk remaining opaque, fragmented, and far harder to scrutinize.

At the same time, governments themselves are part of the friction. The Open Government Partnership has pointed out a fundamental tension in the energy transition: many states are some of the largest owners of oil and gas companies, and their budgets depend heavily on fossil‑fuel revenues. Breaking that habit is not just a technical or financial question, but a political one. When public finances are tied to carbon‑intensive assets, reform becomes a high‑stakes negotiation within the state, not just between governments and civil society.

One case in point is Indonesia. Earthwise’s new report on energy transition trade offs highlights the gap between targets and reality: Indonesia could reach 35% renewable
power by 2035. However, in major nickel-producing regions, coal is still
expected to supply 83% - 94% of power. These areas lack local renewable
resources with adverse effects for communities.

Indonesia has sought to capture more of the economic benefits of nickel production by banning exports to bring processing domestically. Mineral rich countries around the world are trying various approaches to capture more economic benefits. Indonesia banned raw nickel exports to build up local processing. For its part, Ghana is directing Newmont, AngloGold, and Zijin to shift mining operations to local firms by December as reported by Reuters. What will growing lithium producing countries in Latin America do? Find out more when the Collective on Chinese Financing and Investments, Human Rights and the Environment launches a new report on China’s growing role in the sector for the region. Sign up for hybrid launch of a new report examining projects, agreements, and governance issues taking place on May 5th.

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