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Ocean Country Partnership Programme
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) supports countries to manage the marine environment more sustainably, including by strengthening marine science expertise, developing science-based policy and management tools and creating educational resources for coastal communities. The programme is funded through official development assistance (ODA) as part of the UK’s £500 million Blue Planet Fund. Through the OCPP, the UK government partners with ODA-eligible countries to deliver positive impacts for coastal communities that depend on healthy marine ecosystems. Bilateral partnerships under the OCPP are primarily delivered by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), agencies of the UK government that possess unique expertise in marine science and management. The OCPP also funds two international initiatives that align with its aims and help to develop global public goods, the Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) and the Friends of Ocean Action (FOA). GOAP is a global, multi-stakeholder partnership established to enable countries and other stakeholders to effectively measure and manage progress towards sustainable ocean development. FOA is a platform hosted by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the World Resources Institute, which brings together ocean leaders from a wide range of sectors to encourage action and investment into sustainable ocean projects. GOAP and FOA are both strategic partners of the OCPP, and are funded by the Blue Planet Fund (BPF). They do however remain independent organisations from OCPP, BPF, and Defra. Their work, and its intended outcomes and impacts, are strategically aligned with the OCPP and complement its programming in bilateral partnerships. GOAP and FOA were originally developed as separate business cases under the BPF, then in 2022 introduced as integrated components under OCPP to provide a clearer overall BPF offer to recipient countries. The investment to GOAP supports ODA-eligible countries to develop 'ocean accounts' to more accurately and comprehensively capture data on the natural capital assets contained within their oceans. Using this data - and through further technical, advisory, and capacity building support - GOAP aims to ensure that biodiversity is valued and integrated into policy making, decision making, and infrastructure investments in these countries, resulting in the inclusive and sustainable use and management of the ocean. An initial investment of £1million was awarded to GOAP in FY 2021/2. Following good performance in year one, a further £6million of investment was awarded, split evenly over FY's 2022/3, 23/4, and 24/5; giving a total of £7million. From December 2023, following evidence of strong value for money, this investment has since been uplifted to a total of £14.2million, involving new and expanded scope for certain activities, as well as extending the strategic partnership into FY 2025/6. FOA is a multi-stakeholder platform hosted by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the World Resources Institute, which brings together ocean leaders from a wide range of sectors to encourage action and investment into sustainable ocean projects. FOA, working closely with the High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy, aims to mobilise ocean leaders to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. Through OCPP the investment supports pillars of FOA's work that strategically align with OCPP's own outcomes. There was an initial investment of £1million to FOA in FY 2021/2. After FOA performed well against investment and performance criteria in year one, a further investment of £2million was awarded in both FY's 2022/3 and 2023/4; rounding total investment for FOA to £5million.
Global Programme on Sustainability
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The programme supports sustainable economic growth that is both long-lasting and resilient to climate-related stressors. It does this through the integration of natural capital into decision making by governments, the private sector and financial institutions. The inability to value natural capital can undermine long-term growth and critically, the livelihoods of the poorest people dependent on ecosystems for their livelihoods. This programme directly addresses this challenge by (i) investing in data and research on natural capital; (ii) assisting countries to integrate this analysis into government policy making; and (iii) integrating this data and analysis into financial sector decision making.
ORRAA Programme
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) is a multi-sector alliance that aims to drive investment into coastal natural capital through the development of innovative finance solutions. These products will reduce vulnerability and build resilience in the most exposed and vulnerable coastal regions and communities. The UK has committed £13.9 million into ORRAA, delivered in two phases. A successful Phase 1 in 2021-22 provided £1.9m in grant funding, followed by Phase 2 from 2022-2026 with £12m committed in grant funding. The UK’s investment will address 2 challenges faced by coastal communities and the ocean environment: 1) Tackling the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss. 2) Overcoming barriers that prevent finance flowing into nature-based solutions. The grant awarded to ORRAA will support their aims to drive at least $500 million of investment into coastal and ocean natural capital, and produce at least 50 new, innovative finance products, by 2030. This would positively impact the resilience of 250 million climate vulnerable people in coastal areas worldwide.
Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a widespread and lucrative criminal activity causing major global environmental and social harm. The IWT has been estimated to be worth up to £17 billion a year. Nearly 6,000 different species of fauna and flora are impacted, with almost every country in the world playing a role in the illicit trade. The UK government is committed to tackling illegal trade of wildlife products and is a long-standing leader in efforts to eradicate the IWT. Defra manages the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, which is a competitive grants scheme with the objective of tackling IWT and, in doing so, contributing to sustainable development in developing countries. Projects funded under the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund address one, or more, of the following themes: • Developing sustainable livelihoods to benefit people directly affected by IWT, • Strengthening law enforcement, • Ensuring effective legal frameworks, • Reducing demand for IWT products. By 2023 over £51 million has been committed to 157 projects since the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund was established in 2013. This page contains information about Rounds 7 onwards. For information about Rounds 1 to 6, please see the IWTCF website -https://iwt.challengefund.org.uk/
Darwin Initiative
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Darwin Initiative is the UK’s flagship international challenge fund for biodiversity conversation and poverty reduction, established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The Darwin Initiative is a grant scheme working on projects that aim to slow, halt, or reverse the rates of biodiversity loss and degradation, with associated reductions in multidimensional poverty. To date, the Darwin Initiative has awarded more than £195m to over 1,280 projects in 159 countries to enhance the capability and capacity of national and local stakeholders to deliver biodiversity conservation and multidimensional poverty reduction outcomes in low and middle-income countries. More information at https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/the-darwin-initiative. This page contains information about Rounds 27 onwards. For information about Rounds 1 to 26, please see the Darwin Initiative website -https://www.darwininitiative.org.uk/
Psychological, social & biological predictors of child mental health and development: shared and distinctive risk and protective factors in UK & India
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
WHO figures estimate mental health problems affect 12.8% of children in India, which equates to 60 million children. There is an urgent need for culturally sensitive longitudinal studies of community samples starting in pregnancy, designed to examine the earliest origins of child mental health problems to optimally inform the development of new and early interventions. Our study aims to do this in India and the UK. Research in western settings suggest that child mental health problems arise from a complicated mix of social, psychological and biological influences, in which key factors probably include, prenatal stress, early infant temperament, and harsh parenting as risks, and warm parenting as protective factors. There is now good evidence that individual variations and environmental exposures in early life contribute to risk for mental health problems in later childhood and beyond. However, previous research has been conducted almost exclusively in countries with Westernised standards of medical care and family arrangements, and where additional risks such as low birth weight and under-nutrition are rare. The aims of the proposed research are to compare early risk and protective factors for childhood mental health problems in UK and India to identify those that are common to Western and South Asian populations and those that are distinctive. We propose to follow up around 741 families of children in the Bangalore Child Health and Development study (BCHADS) who are living in the urban slums of Bangalore city, at age 4.5 years and age 7 years. We will compare the information we gather on these children's lives to that of the children taking part in our UK Wirral Child Health and Development Study (already collected). In both studies we have two rich data sets with parallel measures of risk and protective factors for child mental health outcomes from pregnancy onwards, including age 8-10 wks, 6 months, 14 months, 2 years, 4 years and 7 years of age. We have gathered detailed repeated measurement of key likely 'shared risks' and associated 'mechanisms' for conferring risk (e.g., gene activity, stress reactivity) and these include measures of early life stress, social support, poverty and economic adversity, early temperament, and caregiving (touch, interaction quality, parenting quality), cognitive and physical development. We will also assess risk and protective factors that may be 'distinctive' or particularly relevant to the South Asian setting: maternal nutrition in pregnancy, early immune function and gender discrimination associated with cultural favouring of the male child, and the practice of shared-caregiving as opposed to primary maternal rearing in Western societies. We also aim to advance cross-cultural measurement methods and develop new culturally sensitive measures of gender discrimination and the 'shared caregiving' parenting environment in India. This work will aid clinicians and researchers to refine their measurements in clinical practice and be able to conduct more reliable research when trying to combine data from multiple cohorts. Finally, this is a joint UK-Indian study and together we will run a series of training events to build capacity and share expertise in conducting longitudinal cohort studies, sampling and retention, measurement issues, data management and state of the art statistical methods needed in longitudinal analysis of complex data sets.
Phase III, Multicentre, Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study to Evaluate Efficacy of Probiotic Supplementation for Prevention of Neona
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
MRC Joint Global Health Trial in India, The current trial aims to find out if feeding probiotics daily for 30 days during the first month of life would prevent these infections. Remaining healthy in the first month is important as it allows the newborns t
Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) India - Calls- tender-UKCEH
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
FHIM (Flood Hazard Impact Model) Implementation. This project “FHIM (Flood Hazard Impact Model) Implementation”, aims to work in partnership with UK (Met Office) and Indian (e.g. NCMRWF (National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting), IMD (India Meteorological Department)) partners to run and upscale the FHIM modelling framework to other regions in India, as well as to port it onto HPC systems used by MoES. This builds on significant developments to the FHIM framework over 4 Phases from 2019-2023 and the effective collaborative partnerships developed with IMD and NCMRWF.
Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) India - Calls- tender-NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Relocatable regional ocean model support to support the uptake of previous programme outputs by partners. The methodology will take the form of 2 technical work packages and an engagement work package, which will be coordinated by a 4th management work package. The technical work packages focus on delivering a Python based open source toolbox that will be easily deployable through a Conda/Mamba environment. These tools will be developed to access data from either local or cloud sources. Particular care will also be made to ensure the code can scale; efficiently handling large datasets and/or making use of high performance computing environments.
Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) India - Calls- tender-UNIVERSITY OF READING
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
EUPHEMISMS Consolidation. The previous EUPHEMISMS/EUPHEMISMS_FO, other WCSSP-India projects, have led to important findings about how convective storms evolve over India during the monsoon season. Knowledge and techniques gained from those studies will be employed in EUPHEMISMS_CO. The researchers have already developed a catalogue of CIs by applying the CI detection algorithm (Chug et al., 2023) to the infrared brightness product of the MERGIR dataset for a larger domain than was considered in EUPHEMISMS_FO. They will use this catalogue to first demonstrate how the location and diurnal cycle of CIs vary over different parts of India, and then uncover the relationship between soil moisture and CIs. They will also demonstrate how CIs and their relationship with soil moisture vary as the monsoon evolves. The results of this work will be consolidated into a journal paper.
Newton International Fellowships (Year 6 Round 1)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
India - Newton International Fellowships
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
Newton Fund India programme delivery
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Newton Fund India programme delivery to support the delivery of ODA activities in Newton Fund countries
Weather & Climate Service Partnership (WCSSP) India - Met Office
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
To undertake research on natural hazards in South Asian Monsoon system (both summer and winter); Improve capability of global coupled, regional convective scale (km) coupled and sub-km city-scale (300m) modelling frameworks to predict priority natural hazards over India. This will involve a significant observational strand to evaluate coupled models at the process level (see Appendix A for draft observations strategy); and Improve tools and techniques for risk based (Ensemble) forecasting of natural hazards at a range of prediction timescales up to a season ahead as a mechanism/pathway for delivering improved weather and seasonal climate services in country.
Weather & Climate Service Partnership (WCSSP) India - Calls - tender
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
To undertake research on natural hazards in South Asian Monsoon system (both summer and winter); Improve capability of global coupled, regional convective scale (km) coupled and sub-km city-scale (300m) modelling frameworks to predict priority natural hazards over India. This will involve a significant observational strand to evaluate coupled models at the process level (see Appendix A for draft observations strategy); and Improve tools and techniques for risk based (Ensemble) forecasting of natural hazards at a range of prediction timescales up to a season ahead as a mechanism/pathway for delivering improved weather and seasonal climate services in country.
Loadshare Networks Private Limited
British International Investment plc
Loadshare is an Indian logistics company that uses technology to bring together small and medium logistics companies to create a pan-Indian network reaching local suppliers and rural customers. By bringing together these smaller companies, Loadshare enables them to have better market access, which in turn boosts their growth and creates jobs.
FinReach Solutions Private Limited
British International Investment plc
Finreach is a guarantee management company in India, providing default guarantees to lending institutions to MSMEs. The company’s mission is to improve credit flow to the MSME segment by enabling lenders to expand their portfolios and product offerings. These lenders tend to be banks or other non-bank financial institutions (“NBFIs”) that specialise in credit underwriting to the segment.
Kallam Transco Limited
British International Investment plc
Kallam Transco Limited is a project company as part of our partnership with IndiGrid Infrastructure Investment Trust and Norfund. The project involves upgrading a substation and building a 13km transmission line in Maharashtra, India. Once built, the project will help generate 3.25 GW of wind energy in the local area.
Ishanagar Power Transmission Limited
British International Investment plc
Ishanagar Transmission Power Limited is a project company as a part of BII’s partnership with IndiGrid Infrastructure Investment Trust and Norfund. The project consist of the construction of substations and an 18km transmission lines in Madhya Pradesh, India. Once built, the project will help cater to the electricity demand of the proposed green hydrogen plant in the nearby area and for the interconnection of a 630 MW Solar Plant.
Dhule Power Transmission Limited
British International Investment plc
Dhule Transmission Power Limited is a project company as a part of BII’s partnership with IndiGrid Infrastructure Investment Trust and Norfund. The project consists of the construction of a substation and 70km transmission line in Maharashtra, India. Once built, the project will help evacuate 2GW of renewable energy from the Dhule Renewable Energy Zone.