Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund Round 8

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.

• 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 round of funding includes the following projects: IWTEX001, IWTEV001-008, IWT108-120. Further information can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/illegal-wildlife-trade-challenge-fund-iwtcf (Language: English)

Darwin Initiative Round 28

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.

Darwin Initiative Round 24

Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs

The Darwin Initiative is a UK government grants scheme that helps to protect biodiversity and the natural environment through locally based projects worldwide. The initiative funds projects that help countries rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources to meet their objectives under one or more of the biodiversity conventions. The objective is to to address threats to biodiversity such as: - habitat loss or degradation - climate change - invasive species - over-exploitation - pollution and eutrophication

Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund Round 5

Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is the fifth most lucrative transnational crime, worth up to £17bn a year globally. As well as threatening species with extinction, IWT destroys vital ecosystems. IWT also fosters corruption, feeds insecurity, and undermines good governance and the rule of law. The UK government is committed to tackling illegal trade of wildlife products. Defra manages the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, which is a competitive grants scheme with the objective of tackling illegal wildlife trade 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 Over £23 million has been committed to 75 projects since the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund was established in 2013; five projects were awarded in 2014 (via applications to the Darwin Initiative), fourteen in 2015, fifteen in 2016, thirteen in 2017, fourteen in 2018 and in the latest round in 2019. This round of funding includes the following projects (details of which can be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/811381/iwt-project-list-2019.pdf)): IWT062, IWT063, IWT064, IWT065, IWT066, IWT067, IWT068, IWT069, IWT070, IWT071, IWT072, IWT073, IWT074, IWT075.

SFC - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Formula GCRF funding to the Scottish Funding Council to support Scottish higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their three-year institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Scottish HEIs in proportion to their Research Excellence Grant (REG). In FY19/20 funding was allocated to 18 Scottish higher education institutes to support existing ODA grant funding and small projects. GCRF has now supported more than 800 projects at Scottish institutions, involving over 80 developing country partners.

Global Challenges Research Fund Evaluation

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The overall purpose of the GCRF evaluation is to assess the extent to which GCRF has achieved its objectives and contributed to its intended impacts.

Transformation Project - ODA Reporting Tool (ODART)

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The Reporting ODA Digital Service (RODA) is the data submission, processing, reporting repository system for data on BEIS R&I ODA Eligible Programmes delivered by Delivery Partners

UUKi Delivery Support

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

These are delivery cost for shared learning workshops/training and best practice (for current and future applicants) on ODA assurance, eligibility, reporting and partnership working through either the NF and GCRF

ODA website - cross-cutting for both ODA funds

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

This is the website for NF and GCRF consortia that promotes funding calls and impact case studies as well as publishing report such as the annual report and monitoring and evaluation documentation.

Ad-hoc GCRF activity on BEIS Finance system

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Increased contributions towards a range of research projects jointly funded with DFID, and funding for the Devolved Administrations for disbursement to universities within the devolved regions to fund the full economic cost of GCRF ODA research.

DfE NI - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Grant to Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland to enable Northern Irish higher education institutes to carry out pre-agreed ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. For Queen’s University Belfast in FY2019/20 this included: workshops in Cambodia, Vietnam, South Africa, and Uganda about health and education; 11 pilot projects spanning 16 eligible countries (Angola, Burundi, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe); and additional support to GCRF and NF-funded activities. For Ulster University in FY2019/20 funding supported six pump-priming projects on: LMIC maternal, neonatal and child health; PTSD in Rwanda; Decision-Making in Policy Making in Africa and Central Asia; and hearing impairment and dementia in China.

HEFCW - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Additional GCRF funding to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to support Welsh higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Welsh HEIs in line with their research council grant income. In FY19/20 funding was allocated to Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Cardiff University and Swansea University. In FY19/20, the funding was used to fund: the full economic cost of existing ODA eligible activities (e.g. already funded by GCRF); small ODA-eligible projects; fellowships to ODA-eligible researchers; and to increase collaboration and impact. 53 ODA-eligible countries have been reported as benefiting from the funded work, with Brazil and India the most frequently mentioned. By region, the largest number of projects were based in the LDC’s (Least Developed Countries) in Asia, South America, and East Africa, with only a few projects in the middle-income countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.

ODA BEIS analysts - cross-cutting for both ODA funds

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

ODA BEIS analysts. For the monitoring and evaluation and learning for NF and GCRF

AMS Coherence and Impact - Global Health Policy Workshops

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Researchers play an important role in driving sustainable impacts on health and welfare by participating in policy development. In many LMICs, poverty correlates with poor health; we are working with partners in LMICs to convene researchers and stakeholders to generate independent, expert health policy advice, based on evidence from research.

Peacekeepers As Soldiers And Humanitarians: The Impact Of Contradictory Roles And Responsibilities On The Protection Mandate of Peacekeepers

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The project conducts research on the currently two largest African peace operation, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) and the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Both missions have complex mandates and combine military (combat), political (stabilisation/statebuilding) and humanitarian goals. The protection of civilians became a cornerstone of both missions. Military peacekeepers are often required to straddle combat and pacific responsibilities, combining military, diplomatic and humanitarian roles. They fight violent actors who are often not easily distinguishable from civilians, patrol roads and convoy humanitarian deliveries, while they are simultaneously requested to develop relations with communities affected by violence, to mediate conflicts and often also to provide humanitarian goods. The project explores how UN and AU peacekeepers in the DRC and in Somalia fulfil their protection mandate from the perspective of protection providers and protection recipients: military peacekeepers (provider), civilians (recipients) and humanitarian worker (recipients and ideally partners of peacekeepers). It will provide an in-depth and differentiated account on how military peacekeepers navigate their increasingly complex roles, swap between combat and pacific responsibilities and how their protection efforts are experienced at the recipients' end. This knowledge is crucial in improving protection efforts. The findings of the research will be shared in round tables with all three actor groups. The round tables aim at receiving feed-back on the research. More importantly, they also aim at providing a platform for communication and at stimulating dialogue between military peacekeepers, civil humanitarian actors and civilians. Round tables will be organised by local civil society organisations who partner in the research project, and it is expected that they will uphold communication links even after the research ended. The findings, i.e. the experiences of the providers and recipients of protection, will feed into a peacekeeping training module. The module will be developed in cooperation with the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC) in Nairobi. The training will be piloted during a workshop with AU and UN trainers and representatives of military headquarters and military trainers of troop contributing countries. The evaluation of the participants will help to fine-tune the training and to finalize a training handbook that will be made publically available and shared with peacekeeping training centres and military headquarters of troop contributing countries.

Improving healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese refugees and IDPs

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

This project aims to help displaced people to access appropriate healthcare for long-term physical and mental health conditions associated with protracted displacement, conflict, and gendered violence. The category of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) receives a great deal of attention. However, there is limited research on how gendered violence, including violence relating to sexuality, is experienced in displacement contexts. There is also limited understanding of how gender, sexuality, and related violence affect access to healthcare, and how that can result in neglected chronic health conditions, particularly mental ill-health. Similarly, much attention is devoted to immediate healthcare needs following SGBV, but longer-term physical and mental health conditions are not adequately addressed. Displaced people face multiple barriers when seeking healthcare in protracted displacement settings, with the result that long-term health conditions are often misdiagnosed and mistreated or undiagnosed and untreated. This project examines access to care and the responsiveness of healthcare providers for displaced Congolese and Somalis in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somali, Kenya, and South Africa. Eastern DRC and Somalia have both experienced long-term conflict and displacement since the early 1990s, leading to large populations of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) within these countries and large refugee populations across the region. Conflict and displacement in Eastern DRC and Somalia are characterised by high rates of sexual and gender-based violence, and victims are stigmatised through prevailing gender and sexual norms. Existing health research tends to focus on the immediate aftermath of violence rather than on long-term mental and physical health conditions. The project has eight field sites in four countries. The four IDP field sites are one formal camp and one informal settlement each in Eastern DRC and Somalia, both of which have weak health systems. The four refugee field sites are Congolese and Somali settlements in Kenya and South Africa, which have different health systems and different refugee laws and policies. The project brings together researchers and practitioners from international development, migration studies, gender studies, medical anthropology, public health and health policy, and medical sciences to undertake interdisciplinary empirical research in these protracted displacement contexts. Panzi Foundation (DRC) and War Trauma Foundation (Netherlands) will guide teams of researchers based at the University of Edinburgh (UK), the University of Kinshasa (DRC), the Somali Institute for Development and Research (Somalia), Amref International University (Kenya), and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa). Project activities are designed to: 1) enhance the capacity of partner organisations; 2) support the inclusion of displaced people in healthcare systems; 3) foster international networks.

Protracted Displacement Economies

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Around the world refugees and displaced people remain in limbo, unable to return home, unwanted where they are living and facing increasing difficulties to go anywhere else. The majority of refugees in the world have been in these situations for more than five years, a threshold usually referred to as 'protracted'. As crises become prolonged, the limitations of the humanitarian response have long been recognised as insufficient and inadequate. Refugees and Internally Displaced People caught up in these protracted situations often speak of watching their lives 'draining away'. The model of support offered to displaced people is known by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) as 'care and maintenance' but perhaps more accurately by advocates of a radical change to this policy as the 'warehousing' of refugees. Global policy interest is shifting from short term humanitarianism to longer term development focused responses to protracted displacement. This was most recently indicated by the Global Compact on Refugees, in December 2018. The Refugee Compact introduces positive language around the long-term self reliance of refugees. This project responds to this renewed political will to find new solutions to protracted displacement and builds on a large body of research and advocacy work in this area. The project investigates the replacement of the care and maintenance model with a new approach: the protracted displacement economy. The protracted displacement economy introduces two key innovations that will contribute to this original analysis as well the potential for impact. First, it is a whole of society approach. The focus is not just on displaced people but the 'displacement affected community', that includes the heterogeneous 'host' population, amongst others. The second key innovation is a fundamental shift in the understanding of the transactions that drive the protracted displacement economy. Financial transactions are the stuff of most economic analysis, yet key human interactions and exchanges or gifts, collective organisation, care work and mutual aid are largely non-financial. Research will involve ten countries, five pairs of countries each separated by an international border: The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)/Uganda, Ethiopia/Somalia, Lebanon/Syria, Myanmar/Thailand, Pakistan/Afghanistan.These ten countries encompass the most serious protracted displacement crises in the world. Research will be conducted with partners in one of each pair of countries and will be attentive to the cross-border dynamics of the protracted displacement economy. International partners are: The University of Kinshasa (DRC), The University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the NGOs Basmeh & Zeitooneh and Sawa (Lebanon), the think tank Covenant Institute (Myanmar) and the University of Peshawar (Pakistan). In each of these five countries, three locations will be selected for empirical research, including at least one urban neighbourhood and at least one camp in each country. Over three years, these 15 locations will be involved in community discussions, large scale surveys and qualitative interviews. Key stakeholders in this process from further afield will be involved in regular meetings so that every stage in the research is informed by relevant expertise. The project will introduce the completely new approach of video narratives, training groups of people in each location to produce five minute videos of the protracted displacement economy that will then be dubbed and shared across all research sites. These films contribute to a wide range of innovative outputs that highlight the operation of the protracted displacement economy. Displaced people develop their own economic activities, including non-financial practices such as sharing and mutual aid as well as entrepreneurial activities. With time, community organisations begin to thrive. The project aims to support this process so that displaced people are able to look to the future with hope.

Harnessing the power of global data to support young children's learning and development: Analyses, dissemination and implementation

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The 2017 Lancet Series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: From Science to Scale, estimated that 43% of children under 5 years in LMICs (250m children), were at risk of not reaching their potential because they had stunted linear growth or lived in extreme poverty. The proportion of children at risk increases appreciably when additional risk factors are considered, especially low maternal schooling and child maltreatment. Living in poor and unstimulating conditions affects young children's learning and development. Children exposed to poverty and adversity explore and learn less than children not exposed to these stresses; they learn less at school and achieve fewer school grades; earn less as adults; have more social problems, and poorer physical and mental health. We will study barriers and accelerators to learning in LMIC ECE programmes, at home and in communities, as well as associations between early learning and indicators of child development and school performance. We will estimate their longer-term effects on education and earnings in adulthood. We will use descriptive and statistical analyses of secondary data collected through representative country surveys and research studies. As an established group of multi-disciplinary and multi-country experts and collaborators, we build on prior success in sourcing and analysing data from 91 LMICs by including early education and expanding to 137 countries. Global data, presented along the continuum of the early years, breaks down the false dichotomy between ECD and ECE, between care and education, and between learning at home and in formal programmes, and supports multi-sectoral actions along different stages of the life-course. We will expand our global analyses of threats to ECD by examining gender, location and wealth, services and family supports for young children, and policies that create facilitating environments for families and children. We will, for the first time, link indicators of the structural quality of ECE (eg teacher-child ratios) to contexts and child outcomes in LMICs. Process quality (eg teacher- and caregiver-child interactions), on which there is as yet no global data, will be studied through case studies in 5 countries, one in each of five regions of the world. We will source data on government, development assistance and household expenditures on pre-primary education; extract further country micro-data on contexts in which young children develop and learn; update nationally representative data on young children, services and policies to the most recent survey dates available, and develop new composite indicators of barriers and accelerators of young children's learning and development. Through partnerships with regional networks of ECD-ECE government and stakeholder teams, the project will help to build research capacity in ECD-ECE, and increase the use of data for decision-making, action and monitoring in 20 countries. We will use the results to provide evidence-based support to engage international human rights law, especially the right to education and the rights of the child, in advancing progress towards achieving the SDG goals of universal access by 2030. This research will address the gap in the evidence base for a unified approach to ECD and ECE. The findings will support the development of the right to education by providing a holistic approach to guide early development and educational interventions. It will demonstrate the strength of interdisciplinary work in cross-fertilizing data analysis and legal research in building strong foundations for translation into policy and regulatory change. Given the evidence on the critical roles of ECD-ECE on learning and wellbeing in the short, medium and longer term, the project has important implications for development and welfare in countries on the DAC list. This large-scale global approach is critical to support and guide policy and investments.

Towards Trajectories of Inclusion: Making infrastructure work for the most marginalised

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The bulk of global population growth until 2050 is projected to occur in cities in Africa and Asia. International agreements, such as UN Habitat's New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals seek to ensure that this growth in as inclusive as possible, yet cities are notoriously unequal places. Our previous GCRF-funded research ('The Unknown City') highlighted the overwhelming significance of securing housing tenure for the most marginal urban residents. The possibility of eviction hangs heavily over everyday life and wellbeing for the urban poor. This project builds on that work. Security of tenure both shapes and is shaped by state decisions to extend infrastructure to 'off grid' settlements. Extending infrastructure can be part of legalising trajectories towards housing security, but can also reverse such trajectories for some by producing new exclusions. This project seeks to bring greater clarity to this complexity and identify ways in which infrastructure for the most marginalised can initiate 'trajectories of inclusion'. The project is designed as action research in which the ultimate goal is a supported intervention in marginalised urban neighbourhood with the aim of implementing findings around these trajectories of inclusion for poor urban residents. The effects of this intervention will be carefully evaluated during the project and the results will be widely communicated. Research builds on the Unknown City project, working in the same cities with the same partners with whom successful collaborations are now well established. The project will focus on two sites from that project in each city in order to develop longer term data sets but it introduces four new neighbourhoods in each country and develops very different approaches, including the central objective of the intervention. Research will be conducted in three countries: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe and the independent but unrecognised northern region of Somalia, Somaliland. These four countries have extremely dynamic by highly contrasting urban environments. Most research will be conducted in the capital cities, respectively, Dhaka, Colombo, Harare and Hargeisa. All four cities are expanding rapidly and are the subject of major urban redevelopment programmes. The project involves core partner academic organisations in each city engaged in research and evaluation of these redevelopment programmes. In addition to two neighbourhoods involved in previous research, research will expand to two additional contrasting neighbourhoods in the capital and two further neighbourhoods in a secondary city in order to highlight if the capitals are unusual in their planning approaches. This selection of six neighbourhoods in each of these four countries are the location for the first stage of research. A variety of techniques including focus group discussions, a large survey and in-depth interviews will be employed to map access to five key infrastructure grids - water, sanitation, energy, transport and communications. This will form a detailed picture of patterns of differential access to these services and the wide variation between 'off-grid' and 'on-grid'. The second stage of research will move beyond these neighbourhoods to follow the grids. In each country, two of these infrastructures will be identified and an approach known as 'Systems of Provision' will map the grid, identifying key individuals responsible for delivery of each service. This will explain the differential patterns of access identified in the first stage of research. These two research stages will lead to and inform the final stage of the supported intervention to enhance accesswhich will be carried out in conjunction with grassroots organisations in each city. The project will engage with local government, NGOs and infrastructure companies throughout with the aim of demonstrating the potential of these interventions and communicate the need to focus on trajectories of inclusion.

Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The Transforming Education Systems for Sustainable Development (TES4SD) Network Plus will develop sustainable institutional capacity in India, South Africa, Rwanda and Somalia to produce high quality research that will assist key stakeholders in these countries and at a regional and global scale to better understand how education systems can be transformed to support sustainable development. Countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are facing unprecedented challenges in relation to sustainable development including poverty and inequality and managing the risks posed by climate change. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) represent a holistic response to these challenges. Education has enormous potential to act as a driver for sustainable development and the education SDG is centrally implicated in the realisation of all of the other SDGs. At present, however, education systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are some way off achieving the education SDG (goal 4). Our vision, consistent with global, regional and national agendas, is for systems of life-long learning that can provide learners with the skills, competencies, values and transformative agency required to meet the challenges of environmentally sustainable and socially just development. The 'wicked problem' that education systems face in realising this vision is how to simultaneously address the current learning crisis in LMICs whilst transforming education systems to become drivers of SD. This challenge needs to be addressed simultaneously across all sectors of the education and training system and at the global, regional, national and local scales. Led by a world leading team containing relevant interdisciplinary and practical expertise, the TES4SD will assist in addressing this problem. Specifically, we will build sustainable research capacity in partner countries to undertake relevant research including early career researchers based in academic and non-academic organisations. The team will synthesise existing and emerging evidence on how schools can be transformed to address the learning crisis and to make them drivers of SD; how can technical and vocational education and training can be transformed to facilitate the development of green skills and to support youth agency in the transition to sustainable, healthy, lifestyles and in revitalising peaceful and democratic societies; and, how higher education institutions can be transformed to support processes of social learning within civil society and amongst policy-makers to address sustainability challenges in cities and rural communities. Questions at the system level include in what ways is Target 4.7 which relates to education for sustainable development understood and implemented and we will develop contextually relevant indicators to monitor progress towards SDG 4.7 at local, national and global levels. The TES4SD network plus will also commission new research based on knowledge co-production techniques to develop evidence and arguments urgently needed to transform education and training systems. Research questions will primarily focus on the sometimes-contradictory relationship between SDG4 and decent work and economic growth (SDG8); sustainable cities and communities (SDG11); responsible production and consumption (SDG12); and, climate action (SDG13). Strategies for developing impact will be embedded in TES4SD activities from inception including the active involvement of beneficiary groups including policy-makers, NGOs and CBOs in network plus research and capacity building activities; and, the strategic targeting of outputs including national and network wide synthesis reports, policy briefs, MOOCs, toolkits to support research capacity, teaching and learning materials for use in formal and informal settings. Dissemination of evidence to beneficiary groups will be facilitated by the creative use of social and other media and supported by a dedicated website. COVID-19