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UK contribution to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Special Fund
HM Treasury
At the ninth UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) in Beijing on 16 December 2017, the Chancellor of the Exchequer signed a Contribution Agreement with the AIIB, formalising the UK’s commitment, made at the previous EFD in 2016, to provide US$50m to the AIIB’s Special Fund for Project Preparation. This fund provides grant support to developing Asian countries to prepare infrastructure projects for the Bank to finance. The UK's contribution is through the Prosperity Fund.
Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP)
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) brings together governments, businesses, and civil society to tackle plastic pollution and increase investment in circular economy approaches in ODA-eligible countries. GPAP’s intended impact is to improve the environment in partner countries by reducing municipal waste while improving the livelihoods of people involved in the waste sector or impacted by plastic pollution. This is achieved principally through (1) the creation of public-private stakeholder collaboration platforms called National Plastic Action Partnerships (NPAPs) and (2) targeted training and assistance for informal waste sector workers. NPAPs are impartial and inclusive stakeholder coordination groups that bring together influential stakeholders across the plastics value chain, including policymakers, consumer goods businesses, non-governmental organisations and waste sector representatives. The partnerships’ work in each country focuses on establishing baselines for pollution, standardising metrics and creating national action plans and roadmaps, all of which inform national waste management policy.
Sustaining Power: Women's struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Women in South Asia have struggled for many decades to improve their lives within their families, in their communities, for securing their livelihoods, and in getting their voices heard as citizens by the state, with women's movements being critical in advancing their rights. However, contemporary social, economic and political changes have created new and multiple forms of backlash and contestations. How do women defend their rights, and secure their gains against these regressive forces and backlash? This question leads our research on the strategies and mechanisms that women use to retain power and sustain gains in women's rights. This research is particularly interested in how different groups of women understanding power and struggle, and how these change over time. We aim to assess what works to defend women's rights, and explain why some struggles are more successful than others in sustaining gains. We think that success of women's struggles depends on a) the types of strategies they use to counter different types of backlash; b) the ways in which struggles include voices and perspectives of different groups of women; and c) the ways in which struggles connect to other movements and groups across local, regional and national levels. The central research question therefore is: When, how, and why do women's power struggles succeed in retaining power and sustaining their gains against backlash? South Asia provides a valuable opportunity to investigate women's struggles. The region has witnessed rapid and large changes over the last decade, including urbanization, rising employment precarity, new electoral laws and regime changes, shifts in social norms, and the spread of digital technology. We aim to examine how these changes create new and multiple forms of backlash; and how women's struggles for power are variously challenged, opened up or are closed down by these changes. We are interested in unraveling the similarities and differences in processes and strategies used by different women's movements to retain power in the face of backlash; and in women's own experiences and interpretations of their struggles as these evolve and adapt over time. We will select 16 cases of women's struggles in four countries that represent the largest populations of South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Within each country, we will select on-going and contentious cases of struggle in one of four arenas within which gains in women's rights are being sought: family, community, market and the state. This research will use a variety of methods including: a) identifying and analyzing the types of backlash created by processes of contemporary change; b) mapping critical players and what shapes their motivations for action; c) tracing the struggles, nature and trajectory of each movement to counter backlash - through oral history methods, reflective and participatory techniques, qualitative interviews and archival research; d) undertaking comparative analysis to compare how different movements may have triggered, galvanized or been strengthened by power struggles across different arenas; and e) identifying and systematizing which combinations of mechanisms and strategies work to defend women's rights in South Asia and beyond. This is a collaborative research project that draws together a multi-disciplinary research team with deep in-country and conceptual expertise on women's rights and contemporary power struggles in South Asia. This project includes strong capacity building initiatives and opportunities for learning through reflective processes with women's movements and research partners. This research is ambitious in its scope and we hope that our findings that will be grounded in real life experiences of women, will be relevant and useful for feminist scholars, activists and policy actors to set their future course of action to defend women's rights across the world.
BBC World Service
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Increasing the provision of, and access to, impartial news and information that responds to audience needs in English and local languages in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America & Central America
I2I - Ideas to Impact - Testing new technologies and innovative approaches to address development challenges.
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
I2I stimulates technological innovations addressing intractable development challenges, initially in the focal areas of energy, water and climate, and then increasingly in emerging “frontier” technologies with broader applicability. It tests different funding mechanisms and approaches - including prizes, peer-to-peer financing, Frontier Technology Livestreaming, and innovative cross-government partnerships - for ensuring technology ideas lead to a real-world development impact.
Effective Governance for Economic Development in Central Asia
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
EGED will help improve the effectiveness, accountability and transparency of economic policies in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. We will support governments in the three countries to generate better data and evidence, use this data for policy design and implementation of up to 15 economic reforms, improved coordination within government, and better engagement with citizens. We will also build the capacity of civil society in the region to hold the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to account on select economic policies. Success will be measured through a) increased public sector revenue generated as a result of better policy planning and monitoring; b) better economic policy outcomes helping improve the livelihoods of Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik citizens and c) improved quality of engagement between government and civil society.
Climate Action for a Resilient Asia
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
A Technical Assistance facility will build capacity of national and subnational governments and vulnerable communities to integrate climate resilience into government-wide policy and planning and also work with the private sector, banks and financial regulators to support the integration of climate-related risks into investment decisions. A portion of the programme budget will be earmarked for coordinated policy work and regional cooperation in specific sectors or themes which require a regional approach where we have existing successful regional partnerships which can be scaled up, and or there is demand from country offices for a multi-country approach. Enable management of the programme including monitoring and evaluation, research, knowledge dissemination, communication, advisory support to country offices if required.
Central Asia South Asia (CASA 1000) Electricity Transmission Project
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
Increased energy trade between Central Asia (initially Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic) and South Asia (Pakistan) for improved energy services leads to improved productivity, private investment, regional trade, and pro-poor growth through access to jobs and services.
Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme supports small and medium-sized (SME) agribusinesses with smallholder supply chains to grow and attract investment for high development impact. CASA is 100% International Climate Finance (ICF) funded, building inclusive, climate-resilient agri-food systems that increase smallholder farmer incomes and strengthen food production, food security and nutrition outcomes.
Governance foundations to sustain forests and people: Forest Governance, Markets and Climate Phase II
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The programme will work at international and national levels to address governance failures by both government and market to curb deforestation, restore degraded lands and eco-services whilst delivering benefits and sustaining livelihoods for people in developing countries. It will build from the experience of an earlier global programme, expanding it to address new threats to forests such as mining and encouraging national climate strategies to focus on forests.
Scaling Access and Learning in Education (SCALE)
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
SCALE will bring together UK-led expertise, funding, support, and influence to increase the uptake of cost-effective interventions that deliver foundational learning outcomes for all, especially disadvantaged girls and boys. Partner governments will be offered demand-driven support to adapt evidence-based interventions to new contexts and implement rigorous test-learn-adapt pilots to ready these for scaling in national systems. The focus on scale and sustainability will multiply the UK’s investment over time. This will accelerate progress against the UK-led G7 girls’ education objectives on access and learning.
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Systems for Health
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
WASH Systems for Health will support governments in up to five developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to strengthen the systems needed to establish reliable, resilient and inclusive WASH services over five years. The programme will contribute to better health, nutrition and education, especially for poorer households and communities, and for women and girls in particular - and will be core to the UK’s approach to ending the preventable deaths of mothers, young children and infants (EPD). The programme’s focus on systems marks a fundamental shift in FCDO’s approach to WASH. Our new approach will enhance the sustainability of WASH services; it will ensure that women are empowered to take informed decisions about the services they receive; and it will attract new public and private finance to accelerate progress towards SDG 6 WASH targets – including universal access to safely managed WASH services.
PIDG2 - Second phase of FCDO's Support to the Private Infrastructure Development Group .
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The aim of PIDG is to mobilise private investment in infrastructure, in order to increase service provision for the poor, boost economic growth, trade and jobs to alleviate poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
Modern Slavery - Supporting Global Action to End Modern Slavery
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To develop new approaches to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking across a range of sectors in high prevalence countries. This programme focuses on thematic priorities of eradicating forced labour in supply chains, tackling the worst forms of child labour, and ending the exploitation of women and girls, and it will support and empower survivors of modern slavery across all these priorities. The programme supports bilateral programmes in high prevalence countries and contributes to multilateral organisations on global policy and advocacy work. The programme will also develop research and evidence on different forms of modern slavery to inform future interventions. This programme contributes toward SDG 8.7 to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour.
Disaster Risk Insurance
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To improve the resilience of the private sector in poor countries to natural disasters by improving access to insurance products. By supporting the development of a market for private sector disaster risk insurance in developing countries, the project will sustainably help strengthen resilience, mitigate the effects of climate change and supporting economic development through private sector growth.