Research and Evidence Programme for Nepal’s Transition

SOAS University of London

The SOAS-Yale Nepal research and evidence programme is a three-way collaboration between SOAS and Yale. The unique feature of this programme is that SOAS and Yale researchers work directly with an FCDO country office to test assumptions underpinning FCDO policy to suggest improvements supporting inclusive growth and inclusive politics in a post-conflict context. We work with Nepali partner organizations (PEI and GovLab) who provide field researchers and organize data collection and collaborate with us on analysis. We hope to create a new model of embedded research with FCDO that has a high impact on policy.

China Green Finance Programme

City of London Corporation

The grant was awarded through the ICF Technical Assistance Programme in China, following a call for proposals in summer 2018. The programme has four overarching themes: • Harmonisation – harmonising green finance guidelines and standards that align with international practices. • Transparency: more transparent and responsible investment approaches that take account of climate-related financial risks and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment. • Innovation: increased innovation in green finance products and practice models. • Capacity Building: furthering the UK-China green finance partnership, accelerating practical implementation of national green finance policies, and promoting wider stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing at regional/city/local levels in China. Five key workstreams are funded under the Programme: 1) The formal set-up of a UK-China Green Finance Centre. This builds on existing engagement between the GFI and China Green Finance Committee to provide a formal platform to improve data access and usage, build capacity and improve knowledge amongst issuers and investors. 2) A UK-China TCFD climate and environmental information disclosure pilot. Announced at the 9th Economic and Financial Dialogue in December 2017, this required additional resourcing to match the extended duration (from 1 to 3 years) and deepening of scope, including additional Chinese participants. This workstream is coordinated by UN PRI. 3) UK-China GreenTech - The UK and China are recognized as world leaders in sustainable finance and innovative green and sustainable technology. To build on the UK-China FinTech bridge and support green technology solutions, funding was secured to explore setting up a green tech incubator to support the delivery of green outcomes to the real economy and financial services industry. 4) Green Belt & Road - China's Belt and Road Initiative Belt and Road developments will have a huge environmental impact on countries along its route. To future-proof these investments, the City of London Corporation set up a Greening the Belt and Road Investor Alliance (GBRIA) in 2017 to harmonise green infrastructure standards along the Belt and Road and optimise capital efficiency in green Belt and Road projects. Funding was focused on harmonising green BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) standards and principles and capacity-building. This workstream led to the launch of the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road (GIP). An institution that at March 2020 numbers 37 signatory institutions from 14 countries and regions, (primarily international banks) and 11 supporting organisations. 5) Greening long-term investment (insurance and pensions). While China has so far very successfully mobilised the banking sector on the green finance agenda, continued engagement with long term investors is important to fulfil the $90 trillion funding gap on green economy transition. Special focus is on the insurance and pension sectors, which, from an international perspective, are key to provide long term momentum for the entire investment chain to deepen ESG practices.

UK Public Health Rapid Support Team - Research

UK - Department of Health (DH)

""Created in 2016, the UK-PHRST is the primary arm of Her Majesty’s Government to provide and coordinate the UK’s public health response to outbreaks in LMICs. The UK-PHRST is a unique collaboration between Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with input from a number of academic partners. The UK-PHRST’s remit covers outbreak response, research, and capacity building, as components of its integrated triple mandate: • Rapidly investigate and respond to disease outbreaks at their source in LMICs eligible for UK Official Development Assistance (ODA), with the aim of stopping a public health threat from becoming a broader health emergency • Conduct research to generate an evidence base for best practice in epidemic preparedness and response • Build capacity for improved and rapid national response to disease outbreaks in LMICs and contribute to supporting implementation of IHR at the request of national governments or international stakeholders such as WHO. The UK-PHRST rapidly deploys a standing team of multidisciplinary public health professionals and researchers as required in countries that are a priority for the UK’s ODA programme. The UK-PHRST full-time Core Deployable Team consists of specialists in epidemiology, laboratory microbiology, infection prevention and control, clinical case management and clinical research, social science, data management and logistical support who are available to deploy within 48 of an approved request. Reservists and Field Epidemiology Training Programme (FETP) Fellows complement this team, providing surge capacity and specialist expertise when needed. The UK-PHRST is financed through UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding through the Department of Health and Social Care. The UK-PHRST Director is the accountable person to the UK Government, through PHE, for delivery of the UK-PHRST objectives.""

Cetacean Strandings around the UK coast.

Zoological Society of London

Scientific research on Cetacean strandings around the coast of the United Kingdom

Enhanced socio-economic resilience of remote rural communities in Kenya and Nepal empowers them to join the fight against the illegal wildlife trade

Zoological Society of London

Stewardship and Rural Development for poor and marginalised frontier communities living alongside protected areas and high conservation value species.

Driving transparent, legal and sustainable forestry practices through financial, market and governance incentives

Zoological Society of London

This project will significantly increase SPOTT’s ability to influence major producers and traders of for-est-products from FLEGT-VPA countries, major trading hubs (including China), and other high-risk are-as. This will be achieved by strengthening the alignment of SPOTT to legal and best practice reform processes (e.g. FLEGT-VPA, REDD+, SDGs); multi-year SPOTT assessments of major traders and pro-ducers; briefings, analysis and technical support delivered through a formalised network of major financial institutions (and other influencers); and improvements to SPOTT’s online platform.

Conserving Tsavo’s wildlife by building community resilience and fostering coexistence

Zoological Society of London

Engaging two key communities on the northern boundary of Tsavo West & Tsavo East to reduce wildlife crime, habitat destruction etc through establishing VSLAs, water infrastructure, HWC mitigation.

Reducing the impacts of plastic on the BIOT natural environment.

Zoological Society of London

Research and pilot campaign to reduce demand for pangolins

Zoological Society of London

Through piloting targeted and evidence-based behaviour change strategies, this project will measurably reduce demand for pangolins among key consumer groups in China.

Mongolia's New Ecological Police: Global Standards and Community Engagementt

Zoological Society of London

This collaboratively designed project will build upon ZSL's past two IWT CF projects, and ZSL's upcoming Segre funded project. This project will, bring ZSL’s UK partners/international standards, will decrease poaching and disrupt trade through four components: 1) building EPD and partners’ LE efficacy by institutionalising a training curriculum and cadre of trainers, enabling intra-agency collaboration; 2) increasing EPD strategic targeting and national standards for Detector Dog Units’ (DDU) training, handling and deployment across LE agencies and IWT hotspots and upgrading facilities; 3) strengthening EPD's rural engagement which empowers vulnerable rural communities to mitigate IWT by partnering at a demonstration site - Arkhangai Local Protected Area (LPA) that can support governance, income diversification and improved well-being; and 4) bolstering EPD’s national recognition as a leading IWT LE agency through public awareness and results-sharing.

Protecting Mongolia’s Gobi Desert for wild camels and herder communities

Zoological Society of London

This landscape is currently threatened by a host of environmental and social issues, including: overgrazing by livestock; habitat degradation and waterhole loss, exacerbated by climate change; domestic-wild camel cross-breeding; and manmade barriers to long-distance wildlife migration. Indigenous herder livelihoods are equally vulnerable to climate change, water scarcity and rangeland degradation. Government and communities alike have lacked mechanisms and resources to collaborate across this vast landscape to share knowledge, experience, and tackle threats.

Combating Palawan pangolin trafficking; empowering community-based protection and pro-active enforcement

Zoological Society of London

Disrupt Palawan pangolin poaching and trafficking by empowering communities to tackle IWT at source, improving human wellbeing, and building knowledge and capacity to combat trafficking across the IWT chain.

Securing Chitwan-Sindhuli Green Corridor; strengthening community stewardship and law enforcement

Zoological Society of London

This project aims to address these challenges by: 1) strengthening capacity and improving transboundary LE coordination, and 2) building capacity of newly established provincial LE agencies by enabling data sharing and intra-agency enforcement efforts to disrupt priority IWT trafficking routes and international wildlife crime through Nepal. 3) by securing community stewardship at key pangolin source sites outside the PA network, through proven Community Management Pangolin Conservation Areas (CMPCAs) which empower communities to manage their community forests, protect pangolins and participate with LE agencies 4) improving well-being through community-led sustainable livelihood schemes, promoting gender equity and social inclusion, increasing local economic and ecological resilience, further “future-proofing” community engagement.

GB-GOV-1-300397 Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

PENDA complements FCDO's inclusion strategy to address fundamental gaps in the inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream development. PENDA is working with the FCDO funded Disability Inclusive Development programme, led by Sightsavers, to evaluate which of their inclusion interventions have the greatest impact on the lives of people with disabilities. The programme is generating knowledge on what works in Disability Inclusive Development (DID) explicitly in relation to education, health, livelihoods and reduced stigma. This includes conducting Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) or impact evaluations in LMICs. The programme is also focused on engaging new and existing researchers in the field, by commissioning out a further series of impact evaluations on the subject. The programme is working on improved research capacity on DID through 1) Collaboration and support with Southern academic partners, 2) Training Southern Academics through a PhD scheme, in particular researchers with disabilities, 3) Training people with disabilities to be participants in data collection and analysis, 4) Building the reputation of Southern partners in DID research. The programme is developing and validating tools to help assess what does and doesn't work in DID. This includes quantitative indicators and qualitative approaches, which are being included in trials for testing.

Prevention of Neural Tube Defects by Inositol and Vitamin B12 (PONTib) - Development Trial

UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are life-threatening birth defects, of which spina bifida is best known. It causes paralysis of the lower body, incontinence of urine and faeces, hydrocephalus ('water on the brain') and other serious health problems. NTDs are common defects, affecting 1 in every 500-2000 pregnancies and with higher frequencies in many low and middle income countries. Supplements containing folic acid (FA), when taken before conception and for the first 3 months of pregnancy, can reduce the risk of a fetus being affected by NTD. However, many women still have babies with NTDs despite taking FA supplements. This experience has shown that 30-50% of NTDs are 'FA-resistant', and for this reason a different supplement is needed to prevent them effectively. Our previous research in mice and humans identified inositol (vitamin B8) as a possible new way to prevent NTDs that do not respond to FA. Other research suggests that vitamin B12 may be an effective additional supplement. Before either inositol or B12 supplementation can be implemented in practice, it is essential to confirm their effectiveness in a clinical trial. This research proposes a pilot clinical trial of inositol in China where there is a high rate of NTDs. This relatively small study will 'pave the way' towards a large-scale, statistically robust clinical trial that will tell us whether inositol, vitamin B12 or both should be used in clinical practice. China is an ideal location for the work as it has an excellent infrastructure for locating women with previous NTD-affected pregnancies, and a very large population to enable sufficient women subjects to be recruited. The study participants will be women with a previous NTD-affected pregnancy who wish to become pregnant again. Those who consent to participate will be randomly assigned to take either inositol, B12, inositol + B12, or neither. In line with the standard care for women at high risk of NTDs, all women subjects will receive 5 mg FA daily. Supplementation will begin before conception and continue until the 12th week of pregnancy. The work will be a collaboration between scientists at University College London - including experts in NTDs and clinical trials - and scientists at Peking University in Beijing. The Chinese investigators have many years' experience of conducting studies during pregnancy in their local populations, for example having recruited over 100,000 women for a study of nutrients in pregnancy in recent years. This pilot study will test whether robust and reliable processes are in place to identify, recruit, randomise and follow up the pregnancies of the women subjects. Then, we plan to progress on to the large-scale trial, where a positive outcome would indicate that inositol and/or vitamin B12 should be taken together with FA in a combined supplement for women planning a pregnancy. The use of inositol or B12 could be rapidly implemented in China, as women already receive free FA tablets when planning a pregnancy. A combined tablet containing inositol/B12 and FA could be provided at a low additional cost. Thereafter, other countries are likely to introduce similar combined supplements to improve NTD prevention. This will not only benefit individuals and families by avoiding the impact of an NTD-affected pregnancy, but will also benefit health care systems economically: the life-time medical and social care costs of a person with spina bifida are more than $0.5M. When the preventive effect of FA was discovered in 1991, this was based on a very similar clinical trial to the one we propose. FA usage has spread to most countries in the world, and we anticipate a similar beneficial effect of our currently proposed research on the future health of children worldwide.

Anti Corruption Evidence ' ACE' Programme

SOAS University of London

The Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) research consortium – led by SOAS, University of London - takes an innovative approach to anti-corruption policy and practice. With £6 million in funding over five years from UK aid, ACE is responding to the serious challenges facing people and economies affected by corruption by generating evidence that makes anti-corruption real and using those findings to help policymakers, business and civil society adopt new, feasible, high-impact strategies to tackle corruption.

Partition of Identity: An exploration of Belonging in Bengalis in Pakistan, 1971- 2021

UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Following the violent Liberation War of 1971 in which Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan, there was a wave of migration from Bangladesh to the more economically stable Pakistan. Often settling in Sindh province, particularly Karachi, these Bengali migrants have participated widely in the Pakistani economy. Many have been refused citizenship rights in line with the Pakistan Citizenship Act of 1951 and despite their Pakistan-born children and grandchildren having little direct knowledge of Bangladesh, they remain without official documentation. This can create challenges in everyday activities (around education, employment and health) and strengthen the idea that they are not 'true' Pakistani citizens as emphasised by a wider state narrative. Recently, with the arrival of a newly elected government, momentum has been building towards granting the community full rights. Moreover, with the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh's creation in 2021 drawing ever closer, our project comes at a critical time. Our research takes place in 3 phases and overall, we aim to investigate how the identities and contributions of these Bengali migrants are understood within the community, and how they have they been understood by a wider Pakistani state narrative since 1971. Furthermore, we aim to understand how these two accounts influence each other. No existing record of this group exists. By co-producing a new history of identity, activism, migration memory and belonging with our interviewees and arts partners, we will ensure that the voices of Pakistani Bengalis are recorded and heard. Our sample will be diverse including Pakistani Bengali men, women and young people of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Our project will: - transform academic and public understandings of how lack of citizenship influences social identity and sense of belonging, and stimulates resistance, among Bengalis in Pakistan, particularly in young people. This will be through creating written and aural records from this group, accessible for anyone to read or listen to. - expand understandings of how social representations of minority groups can influence their treatment and social positioning in the developing world - enhance awareness of the Pakistani Bengali minority group in terms of its cultural heritage and socio-economic contribution to Pakistan through the range of project outputs The project will be conducted with a series of partners based in the UK and Pakistan. These include: UCL, Where the PI is based, Lahore University of Management Science, where the Co-I is based, the Citizens Archive of Pakistan, National College of Arts, Lahore Students Union and Pakistan Institute for Education and Labour Research. Our partners will be involved to differing degrees in the 3 research phases. In Phase 1 we will conduct a strategic search through historical, policy and media documents for depiction of the community. This will inform the interview and archival elicitation work in Phases 2 and 3. It will also give information on wider state and media representation of this group. Phase 2 will involve oral history interviews and archival elicitation with 48 adults and 30 young people. We will also conduct art workshops with young people. Here we will gather information on community representation of self. In Phase 3, artists and musicians will re-imagine both state representation and also community representations to produce new outputs based on the community. By the end of the project, we will have created and developed a new oral history archive, art and music based on the research, a documentary, a website, online exhibition, museum exhibition, two output events, media articles, 3 journal articles and co-edited book. Most importantly, we will advance the field by generating important new knowledge regarding the Bengali community in Pakistan following their migration in 1971 and ensure that their stories are told and voices are heard.

Yaba guy che ""for the guys"": Intervention co-development to increase men's HIV service use

UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

In Zambia, as in other sub-Saharan African countries, men are less likely than women to access HIV services, including HIV testing services, which acts as a gateway to prevention services and the HIV care continuum. As a consequence, men are less likely than women to know their HIV positive status, men initiate HIV treatment (ART) at later stages of infection, thus experiencing higher levels of morbidity and mortality once initiated on ART. Without knowledge of their HIV status, HIV positive men are more likely to transmit HIV to their sexual partners. The barriers to men's engagement in HIV services are complex and multifaceted, and operate at national- through to individual-level. These include how healthcare services are funded, delivered and promoted, leading to healthcare facilities being seen as ""female-spaces""; harmful gender norms related to masculinity, restricting men's use of HIV-related services and influencing their perceptions regarding their peers use of HIV-related services, and men's mobility for work, limiting their ability to access health facilities operational during conventional working hours. To improve men's engagement with HIV services, including HIV prevention and treatment services, a systems-wide approach to understanding and addressing these interacting barriers to service use is needed. Through participatory qualitative research and crowdsourcing, this early phase study will work closely with men in an urban community in Lusaka, Zambia, to: 1) establish the barriers to HIV testing services and linkage to prevention and care that men perceive to be most inhibitive to their service use, and 2) co-develop a multi-component intervention to address barriers to service use. The multi-component intervention is intended to address barriers related to how and where HIV testing services are delivered, to transform norms related to HIV testing uptake and establish social support for use of HIV prevention services, in particular medical male circumcision, and initiation and uptake of ART. In parallel, we will use time location sampling to assess whether this alternative sampling method, often used to reach ""hidden populations"", could be used to evaluate the impact of the multi-component intervention in a cluster randomised trial. The intervention will be finalised through a series of workshops with men residing in the study community and other stakeholders, including district health managers and healthcare workers, with support from these groups obtained before progression to a cluster randomised trial.

Hygiene, Handwashing & Behaviour Change Coalition for COVID 19 response programme

UK - Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

To develop an innovative partnership with Unilever to provide funding, for a ‘Hygiene, Handwashing & Behaviour Change’ Coalition for Covid19, matched with in-kind support and technical expertise by Unilever. Under Unilever leadership, the coalition will bring together academia (e.g. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), INGOs (e.g. Oxfam) and UN agencies, to deliver mass communications, hygiene products and digital behaviour change programmes on the importance of hand and environmental hygiene in low- and middle-income countries. This will build on recent investments Unilever has made in response to Covid19 and will allow scale up across multiple countries.

AT2030 - Cluster 3: Country Implementation

Global Disability Innovation Hub

This cluster has several elements. Firstly, it brings together the WHO, GDI Hub and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to develop, test and learn from Country Capacity Assessments. Secondly it supports countries to develop national action plans. Thirdly it funds investment to support national AT priorities in these countries. Fouthly and led by The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), this cluster is developing AT Product Narratives to inform global investment and scoping market-shaping opportunities. Lastly, to align and consolidate global AT efforts, as well as to lay the foundations for systems-level change, this cluster is providing a set of global benchmarks and standards for AT. This programme is being co-led by WHO, UNICEF, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.