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Funding to support delivery of ODA eligible programming delivered by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew provides an international centre of expertise and benefits to developing countries, including through collections and seed banks, agricultural science including collaboration with the ODA eligible Global Crop Diversity Trust, plant health including diagnosis of plant pests and diseases and biosecurity, capacity building (CBD, CITES, Nagoya Protocol, IPBES), M&E of ICF, advice on climate change resilience.
MEA: Annual contribution to the United Nations Environment Trust Fund of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
This activity supports an annual UK contribution to the IPBES. IPBES is a science-policy platform providing comprehensive, credible and legitimate scientific knowledge about Earth’s essential life support systems and their contribution to human well-being; as well as tools and local capacity to help decision makers around the world identify solutions to pressures on ecosystems, sustainable use of natural resources and related poverty. Contributions to the IPBES Trust Fund are used to meet the running costs and support developing country expert engagement in delivering the work programme agreed by member governments at the Plenary meetings.
International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime Strategic Vision 2030
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a lucrative transnational crime which undermines governance, fuels corruption, creates instability, threatens species with extinction and deprives some of the world’s poorest communities of sustainable livelihoods. The International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC)’s Strategic Vision 2030 programme involves a global collaborative effort of inter-governmental organisations, which aims to create a fit for purpose law enforcement and criminal justice system that effectively addresses wildlife crime. The ICCWC Vision 2030 programme will guide ICCWC interventions through a series of targeted approaches to achieve the five outcomes: 1) reduced opportunity for wildlife crime, 2) increased deterrence of wildlife crime, 3) increase detection of wildlife crime, 4) increase disruption and detention of criminals, and 5) evidence-based action, knowledge exchange and collaboration. Defra’s funding will contribute towards delivering the interventions for outcomes 3, 4 and 5. Implementation of activities will develop capacity within, and provide support to, wildlife authorities, police, customs, and justice systems in strategically important developing countries, to ensure that they effectively respond to and address wildlife crime. The strategy shifts involvement in the IWT to a high-risk low-reward environment. Reduced IWT will help alleviate poverty, biodiversity loss and climate change. The collaborative global working of ICCWC combines partners with diverse and extensive experiences and brings together countries impacted by IWT to yield more effective results in addressing wildlife crime.
PROBLUE
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
PROBLUE is the World Bank’s leading multilateral mechanism for leveraging and disbursing blue finance towards sustainable ocean sectors and activities. It is a multi-donor trust fund that supports the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, Life Below Water, and the Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. PROBLUE aims to do this by reducing the existing blue finance gap by creating the necessary enabling environment for public and private sectors to shift from unsustainable to sustainable activities.
Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures programme
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Defra is one of the largest funders of the global, market-led, and science-based Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) initiative. The TNFD recommendations and supporting implementation guidance enable organisations to assess, report, and act on their evolving nature-related risks, opportunities, impacts, and dependencies, with the ultimate aim of supporting a shift in global financial flows towards nature-positive outcomes and achieving the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Defra contributed £2,626,855 to support the TNFD initiative’s two-year open innovation ‘design and development’ phase, which culminated in the launch of the final TNFD corporate reporting recommendations on nature-related risk management and disclosure in September 2023 at New York Climate Week. From November 2021 – November 2022, Defra also contributed £1,675,000 to fund a TNFD African Voice pilot programme, with Financial Sector Deepening Africa (FSD Africa) acting as the delivery partner. This funding was used to secure engagement by African financial institutions, governments, and central banks, with the aim of ensuring that the TNFD framework is fit for purpose in African contexts. In addition, this funding supported the production of a report examining the materiality of nature-related risks for financial institutions in African contexts. At COP28 in December 2023, the Defra Secretary of State announced an additional £2 million funding to support the TNFD initiative’s global market uptake phase, which is focused on encouraging and enabling voluntary market adoption across sectors and geographies, and supporting efforts to address the knowledge, capacity building and data needs of market participants. In March 2025, Defra approved an additional £1 million funding support for the work of the TNFD's global market uptake phase.
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/
Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) Fund Investment
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBF Fund), is a competitive, international nature fund to support ODA-eligible countries to implement the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), by providing project funding to protect and enhance biodiversity. It will support the development and implementation of sustainable biodiversity-based products, services and activities that enhance biodiversity, to generate social, economic and environmental benefits. Investments are pooled and the GBF Fund is designed to maximise additional finance leveraged from the private sector to further boost investment to biodiversity and create sustainable financial flows.
Darwin Plus
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Darwin Plus is a UK government grants scheme that helps deliver long-term strategic outcomes for the unique biodiversity, the natural environment and improving resilience to climate change within the UK Overseas Territories. It also also provides funding to build capacity through training and education opportunities for UKOT nationals. Part of Darwin Plus is ODA funded to support Overseas Territories Montserrat, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island. This page contains information about Main Rounds 10 onwards and Darwin Plus Local 1 onwards. For information about previous Rounds, please see the Darwin Plus website -https://darwinplus.org.uk/ This page also shows information relating to Darwin Plus commercially contracted programme work being delivered in the OTs through Defra's Arms Length Bodies - Fera, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
Global Fund For Coral Reefs (GFCR)
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Coral reefs are amongst the most valuable ecosystems on earth, harbouring the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem, supporting 25% of marine life and providing a myriad of benefits to thousands of species. The Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR) is a project within the Blue Planet Fund portfolio. The GFCR is the first Multi-partner Trust Fund for Sustainable Development Goal 14. It provides finance for coral reefs with particular attention on Small Island Developing States. The GFCR promotes a ‘protect-transform-restore-recover’ approach through the creation and management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to save and protect coral reefs in the face of serious decline and extinction. The GFCR has four main outcomes: Protect priority coral reef sites and climate change-affected refugia Transforming the livelihoods of coral reef-dependent communities Restoration and adaptation technologies Recovery of coral reef-dependent communities to major shocks
Legacy Landscapes Fund
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Legacy Landscapes Fund aims to guarantee long-term conservation funding to protect biodiversity, promote climate resilience, and foster equitable development in some of the world’s most outstanding landscapes. The UK will work together with LLF and its partners to help narrow the biodiversity finance gap and deliver the global 30by30 target on land by sourcing significant and sustained funding for protected areas with high biodiversity and critical ecosystems. LLF are a multi-donor conservation trust fund established in 2020 that deliver long-term support to vital protected areas and their buffer zones in the global south. Their ambition is to fund 30 landscapes by 2030, and they benefit from partnerships with a range of public and private donors and NGOs who provide strategic support and effective, inclusive implementation. Central to LLF's approach is an understanding that long term and predictable funding helps them to deliver better outcomes and builds capacity more effectively. LLF, it's partners and Defra are committed to the equitable delivery of 30by30, and this funding will focus on maximising benefits for Indigenous peoples and local communities and promoting gender equity.
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/
South Africa Biome Mapping with UAVs and Satellite Measurements
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
South Africa is a water-scarce country, which experiences highly variable rainfall as well as high evaporative rates resulting in an average of only 9% of rainfall being translated into streamflow. These characteristics have led to a system where water resources are strongly intertwined with the land cover and land use, and thereby the energy and carbon fluxes. The proposed study area is part of the Northern Drakensberg Strategic Water Source Area (SWSA) in the upper uThukela catchment. The study area, includes a vast tract of the protected, near pristine UNESCO World Heritage Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park which falls under the management of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZNW), contrasted with the heavily engineered Thukela-Vaal Pump storage scheme and impoverished communities with no access to water. The complex terrain and high levels of biodiversity endemism make the landscape sensitive to global change. There is a heavy dependence on the ecosystem services this landscape provides at national, regional and local scales with the livelihoods of the local population closely linked to the natural resources and ecosystem integrity. High soil-carbon stocks and the catchments' substantive contribution to the country's water resources, coupled with trends in land transformation impacting on these ecosystem functions provide a development context of national significance in which to understand global change impacts on ecosystem functioning along a river course from point and plot scale to cumulative downstream impacts. To optimally manage the landscape, as well as identify intervention and restoration activities, fine-scale observations over the relatively large area are required. Being in a developing country, as well as a rural area with complex topography means that fine-scale, field-based observation data are scarce, and is limited to a small research area in the headwater catchments in the protected grassland area (approximately 8 km2 out of a larger area of approx 5000 km2) and a new established site lower in the landscape in a conservation area. Land cover outside the protected areas varies from commercial agricultural cropping and rangelands, to heavily degraded rural village areas. Remotely sensed satellite based information is often inaccurate in areas of rugged, mountainous terrain such as this. The overarching objective of this project, would be to develop and validate fine scale datasets for the selected areas in the Northern Drakensberg for use in land and water management and modelling applications. These datasets are critical for upscaling ongoing in-situ observations across the broader landscape, in order to reduce spatio-temporal uncertainty around the influence of global change on ecosystem biodiversity and functional assets. This would be achieved through the joint expertise of STFC RAL Space in earth observation and SAEON in field based monitoring in combination with their local knowledge The aims and objectives are Design and build a drone-based HyperSpectral Imager (HSI) platform for use in the field in the Northern Drakensberg, South Africa. Perform fine-scale vegetation, land, evapotranspiration and soil water content mapping using drone technology and hyperspectral, thermal and LIDAR at a seasonal temporal resolution. Complement in-situ monitoring with land-based sensors and satellite imagery for tracking seasonal and longer-term shifts in vegetation phenology. Validate the fine-scale data products from the drone and satellite imagery using existing field-based data. Build capacity through knowledge exchange and sharing of procedures and best practice.
Amazon +10 Initiative
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
This call will support UK-Brazil research expeditions to improve our knowledge of the biodiversity and socio-cultural diversity in the Brazilian Amazon. Projects will address geographic and taxonomic biases in our understanding and encourage co-creation of research with traditional knowledge holders from local and indigenous communities. This will support sustainable development of the Amazon by enabling better use of the region’s natural resource and associated traditional knowledge. This opportunity is led by Brazil (CONFAP and CNPq) and forms part of the wider Amazon+10 initiative. It will strengthen UK-Brazil (both UKRI and the British Council will participate in this opportunity) research and position the UK as a key global player in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.
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.
Supporting a Just Rural Transition to Sustainable Agriculture
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The programme will support the agenda of repurposing agricultural subsidies, to drive transformation of food systems and land use as a key shift in the global fight against climate change. It will frame an overall approach within the international system, developing understanding and commitments, and help developing countries to work through options and implement policy reforms.
The Amazon Catalyst for Forest Communities (AMCAT)
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The Amazon Catalyst for Forest Communities (AMCAT) will invest up to £94 million of UK ODA over six years (2025-2030) to strengthen the forest governance and forest tenure security of Indigenous People and local communities (IPLC) across the Amazon Basin. It will work directly with IPLC organisations in up to eight Amazon countries, and catalyse further action across the region strengthening knowledge and influence and enabling groups to secure additional finance to magnify impact regionwide.
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Core Contribution 2021-2026
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To achieve a future that avoids, minimizes, and reverses land degradation and mitigates the effects of drought in affected areas at all levels and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and within the scope of the Convention
Central Asia Small Projects Programme
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
This programme will provide the mechanism for embassies to develop small projects to further the aims of the Country Business Plans and develop learning to support wider programming initiatives, with the overall aim of supporting development in the region.
Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition (COAST) programme
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
The Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition (COAST) programme aims to improve vulnerable coastal communities' resilience to climate change and prosperity from a more sustainable use of their marine environment. COAST will achieve this through a multi-component approach focused on: i) protecting and restoring coastal habitats providing nature based solutions (e.g. mangroves, seagrass, coral reefs), ii) improving small scale fisheries management, governance, sustainability and productivity, iii) scaling more sustainable, climate resilient, low carbon aquaculture production by coastal communities and the private sector, and iv) strengthening coastal planning and governance. COAST will focus in up to six priority countries, first building evidence around themes ii) and iii) and supporting science based blue carbon policies, followed by regulatory strengthening and grants for local level projects. COAST is part of the UK's £500m Blue Planet Fund portfolio.
Eastern Neighbourhood Small Projects Programme
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
This programme will provide the mechanism for embassies to develop small projects to further the aims of the Country Business Plans and develop learning to support wider programming initiatives, with the overall aims of supporting development in the region. This is part of the FCDO’s official development assistance and falls under the OECD DAC ODA rules.
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