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UK Hydrographic Office - Skills Development Bursary
Ministry of Defence
The UKHO’s international bursary training programme is primarily aimed at cartographic capacity building and meets UKHO’s objectives of enhancing data supply with training (with skills and knowledge) and developing or strengthening relationships with key partners.
Knowledge, Evidence and Engagement Portfolio (KEEP)
UK - Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
KEEP is a research and engagement facility that enables HMG climate leads to commission bespoke evidence and engagement activities to improve the delivery and increase the ambition of UK International Climate Finance activities, supporting developing countries to tackle climate change. It facilitates this by making funds available for research and engagement activities, filling evidence gaps and by ensuring efficient quality assurance and approval procedures
UK contribution to the World Bank Group PROBLUE Programme to facilitate sustainable finance for healthy oceans
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.
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.
International Climate Finance R&D Programme
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
This International Climate Finance (ICF) funded programme will deliver an integrated package of projects to strengthen global knowledge and understanding of the interrelationship between the climate and biodiversity challenges. It will seek to inform the work of policy developers and development practitioners globally and help narrow the funding gap between current and required investment in natural solutions to climate change. It recognises that the scaling, and effectiveness, of natural solutions to the triple challenge of climate change, poverty and biodiversity loss (hereafter referred to as ‘natural solutions’) requires an investment in the primary evidence base needed to inform effective decisions, and drive innovation in the future. The proposed package of work is designed to meet both short and longer-term evidence needs, including to deliver a UNFCCC and CBD legacy, focusing on ensuring strategic, policy-relevant results and a global network of knowledge exchange and learning. As part of this programme, the UK committed £40m to establish the Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate (GCBC). The GCBC is funded by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) with International Climate Finance, working in partnership with DAI Global as the Management Lead and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as the Strategic Science Lead. Through a series of research grant calls the GCBC will support GBF Targets 8,11 & 14 by establishing a global network of research institutions and experts to address critical research gaps in how the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity can address climate solutions and improve livelihoods. The GCBC was announced at COP26 with £40m of UK International Development funding. It contributes to the UK Government’s commitment to spend £3bn of its £11.6bn of International Climate Finance on nature and biodiversity over the 5 years to March 2026. The GCBC aims to support developing countries to shape decision-making and develop policies that better value, protect, restore and sustainably manage biodiversity in ways that tackle resilience to climate change and poverty. For more information, please visit www.gcbc.org.uk
UKCEH National Capability ODA: Options for Net Zero Plus and Climate Change Adaptation
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project centred on advancing the capabilities of selected LMIC countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, South Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria) to deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches. This includes 1) delivering capabilities that support the development and delivery of plans to reduce emissions and increase carbon sinks of natural and managed ecosystems while considering possible cascading effects and trade-offs that impact on the wellbeing and livelihoods of the population in beneficiary countries. 2) Supporting beneficiary countries in their National Adaptation Planning in response to climate change through enhancing the predictability of changing freshwater resources and improving hydro-meteorological forecasting to inform early-warning systems for cascading hazards.
BGS National Capability ODA: Geoscience to tackle global environmental challenges
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Global environmental challenges will be the focus of BGS' research, specifically: strengthening adaptation and resilience to geological hazards and climate change; security and sustainability of resource supply chains; and reduction in risk to urban and rural infrastructure. These are highly complex interconnected issues, all underpinned by the geosciences, and with an international collaborative approach the proposed research can play a role in tackling them. Our programme will be organised and managed around three interlinked Research and Innovation Challenges (RICs) representing the global environmental challenges: RIC 1: Living in multi-hazard environments RIC 2: Resources for the future RIC 3: Land use change Key to success is research co-designed and delivered via equitable partnerships. To facilitate this translation and to build-in opportunities for inter-connectivity of projects across the programme, we have framed the RICs to work in three key contexts to realise maximum benefit: (1) The urbanising world, representing areas experiencing rapid urbanisation, (2) Resource research emerging economies, representing countries essential to the global supply chain for minerals, energy and food, and (3) Communities on the climate change frontline, where effects will be most impactful or represent scenarios translatable to other parts of the world. BGS has extensive experience in geological multi-hazards research and support for national emergency response organisations. In RIC 1 we will (a) develop new methods for characterising, monitoring and forecasting hazards, both natural and anthropogenic, (b) undertake research into hazards and their impacts in multi-hazard locations including Indonesia, the Philippines and the UK Overseas Territories, and (c) investigate how geoscience knowledge and expertise supports disaster preparedness, response and recovery worldwide and how this can be improved. Geoscience is key to ensuring the sustainable supply of raw materials required to reach net zero, to continue global economic and social development and, along with the supply of food and water resources, to sustain and promote equitable development. Our RIC 2 research will focus on sub-Saharan Africa, the Li-Triangle in South America, and the Philippines. It will: (a) leverage BGS expertise in global raw material supply chain/circular economy research in critical and energy transition raw materials, raw materials for rapid urbanisation and trade-offs associated with mineral waste, (b) develop the geological model structures to facilitate the development of geothermal energy in LMICs, and requirements for sub-surface storage of CO2, and (c) inform strategies for the sustainable use of biophysical resources for food production and utilisation of water resources, for mitigation of environmental degradation and improve supply resilience to support population growth and climate change. Sustainable land management and climate change adaptation research in RIC 3 will work in south and south east Asia, Mexico and east Africa to investigate: (a) climate and anthropogenic pressures on climate and anthropogenic pressures on soil and water quality and quantity; (b) geoscience solutions for sustainable land management to improve agricultural and groundwater resilience; and (c) urban geohazards which are compounded by rapid expansion, and mitigations to increase resilience to these pressures and from climate change impacts.
SE Asia Plastics Non Grant Expenditure
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Expenditure to cover Data Management, and Mid and Finale Workshops for the programme
SE Asia Plastics Op Ex
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Operational Expenditure to Support South East Asia Plastics Programme. This benefits Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines
South East Asia - Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) - Met Office
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Strengthened partnership between meteorological services in UK, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to produce scoping study identifying S-E Asian region weather forecasting and climate research priorities. This includes training needs analysis for future capacity building work and initial survey of severe weather and DRR services.
Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project to build a holistic understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project to build a holistic understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project to build a holistic understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project to build a holistic understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
This project is based on in-depth research in rural and indigenous communities in the cordillera of Guatemala (volcanic arc and southern highlands) that are located close to active volcanoes and in the vicinity of Lake Atitlán. This region has an extraordinarily high level of hazard exposure that intersects with, and is exacerbated by, existing forms of socio-economic vulnerability. People die, suffer and lose livelihoods in disasters in part because of Guatemala's geological and climatological conditions that make it prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes, as well as frequent landslides during the rainy season. The dynamic and interactive nature of these risks are still poorly understood. There is then an urgent need to gain better understandings of physical processes and, in particular, of multihazard interactions in the Guatemalan context from a scientific perspective. However, this hazard exposure cannot be separated from long histories of landlessness, state-led violence and genocide that manifest themselves today in colonial and discriminatory attitudes towards poor indigenous and mixed race (ladino) Guatemalans. Such attitudes result in failures by authorities to protect, warn, evacuate survivors, exhume and properly count the dead, and to relocate or rehouse people with dignity and in culturally appropriate ways. These experiences also mean that local people often do not trust state agencies or western science, and indigenous peoples also have their own knowledge systems and modes of understanding risk and resilience that they deem to be more reliable. The losses and complexities of recent disasters such as the June 2018 eruption of the Fuego volcano and the building of resilient communities urgently require research that brings physical sciences into dialogue not only with social sciences and humanities, but also with diverse cosmovisions and beliefs. This project involves a close collaboration between physical scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars and Guatemalan community leaders in communities exposed to multiple forms of risk. It is based on a shared commitment to reduce the suffering caused by hazards and disasters but involves people who work with very different epistemic, theoretical and methodological approaches and knowledge frameworks. We ask whether we can better understand risk and do research that is both respectful and useful to local people by putting these different knowledge systems on an equal footing. We will therefore combine quantitative monitoring techniques with artistic and ethnographic work and a range of community engagement activities. The scientific and the cultural will be combined in a 8-episode television series produced in collaboration with local organizations, actors and mediamakers in which the complexity of rural community lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples living with risk will be ethically represented and followed up by a range of outreach activities in community spaces and on radio, television and social media. We will produce a cultural product that will provoke high levels of audience engagement and debate by scientists, community members, development practitioners, emergency managers and government agents.
Drought and peatland fires in Indonesian Borneo: Understanding drivers and impacts to build resilience through sustainable development
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo is home to extensive peatlands. In dry years such as 2015, peat fires burn for months with huge impacts: Exposure to smoke during this period is expected to cause 100,000 premature deaths, caused major economic disruption with a cost of $16.1Bn to the Indonesian economy and, for three months, emitted more carbon than the entire EU. Indonesia's peatland fires were described as 2015's 'worst environmental disaster' (Guardian, 2015) with Central Kalimantan at the epicentre. The majority of fires in this region are started deliberately, primarily to clear forest for small or large-scale agriculture (satellite data indicates that there were close to 40,000 fire hot spots in C. Kalimantan peatlands in 2015), but their frequency, duration and severity are strongly climate linked and facilitated by El Niño droughts, which may become more frequent under global warming. In their intact natural waterlogged, forested state these peatlands rarely burn, therefore fires are concentrated in the (extensive) areas that have dried to some degree due to deforestation and drainage for agriculture and timber extraction. Here, smouldering fires burn down into the underlying peat, can burn for months and are the primary cause of near annual air pollution events affecting SE Asia, which were particularly severe during 2015. Thus the drivers behind the peatland fires are a combination of climatic processes, a legacy of historic land use impacts that ensure a high fuel load, and human activities that provide ignition sources. The resulting huge impacts are, therefore, to a large extent preventable but effective action requires a more detailed understanding of future climate-associated risk, biophysical and socio-economic conditions and human behaviours. We propose an integrated, multidisciplinary project with three core aims: 1) To better understand the drivers behind the multiple drought- and fire-associated hazards and their spatial distribution in the peatlands of Central Kalimantan Province, Indonesian Borneo 2) To characterise the multiple, cumulative impacts of drought and the biophysical and human behavioural chains leading to them, and identify the population groups/communities most vulnerable to these hazards. 3) Combining information from 1 and 2, identify priority actions and policies for work to reduce the risk of fire and identify the socio-cultural, agro-ecological, physical and economic hurdles to achieving positive outcomes from their implementation within the context of sustainable development that leads to better environmental and socio-economic circumstances for all. The ultimate aim of this project is to build long term resilience to the multiple hazards associated with drought and fire in Central Kalimantan's peatlands by developing the knowledge, tools and capacity to reduce the current co-drivers (e.g. human land uses) and also to plan ahead for when circumstances (climate, land use) change in the future. Fully understanding the human costs can guide the appropriate action to take to minimise the impacts when a disaster does occur. Our proposed research on building resilience emphasises the need to do this in the context of sustainable development and building positive economic opportunities that will incentivise stakeholders. To ensure the research achieves the maximum impact, the consortium partners include Indonesian government agencies and departments, an NGO with extensive experience of engaging rural communities in the region and equal partnerships between UK and Indonesian universities to develop local research capacity through collaboration and training.
Preparedness and planning for the mountain hazard and risk chain in Nepal
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project which aims to improve decision-making and preparedness in order to mitigate the impacts and reduce the risks from the mountain hazard chain in Nepal.
Preparedness and planning for the mountain hazard and risk chain in Nepal
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Context Nearly 1 bn people live in mountain landscapes within developing countries. Living with the impacts of multiple hazards in mountainous regions, such as monsoon rainfall, earthquakes and landsliding, is for many a day-to-day reality. Both the short- and long-term impacts of hazards are often exaggerated by their concurrent or sequential timing, and by the socio-political context in which they occur. This context results from fragmented government, rapid population change, and the very localized impacts of global (geo)political interests. As a result, hazards have recurring and disproportionate impacts on some of the most vulnerable members of society. While much research has been conducted on both the socio-political context and the individual hazards and risks that people face, this work is rarely used for disaster risk management. Aims & objectives To tackle this, we build on our existing long-standing collaborations with the aim of examining how best to develop and use new interdisciplinary science to help inform better decision making and reduce the impacts of multi-hazards in mountain countries. We focus on Nepal, which has many similarities to other lower-income countries that endure complex multi-hazards resulting from earthquakes and monsoon rainfall as well as emerging systemic risks. Nepal is also undergoing complex social, political and economic transformation associated with a change to a federal system of government and changing geopolitical pressures, all within a hazardous yet densely populated landscape. The objectives of our research are each designed to make a significant difference to the ways in which residents, government, and the international community take decisions to manage multi-hazards and systemic risks. They include: (1) Thinking critically about our current understanding of the social, political, economic and environmental context within which disasters occur in Nepal, and the data that we use to assess that context; (2) Establishing a new approach to national-scale strategic-planning for complex multi-hazard events, which includes the consequences of linked earthquakes, monsoons and landslides; (3) Developing interdisciplinary science to anticipate, plan for, and communicate the range of hazards that occur during the monsoon; and (4) Finding the best ways to utilise local knowledge and interdisciplinary science to inform how to prepare for and respond to multi-hazard disasters. Potential applications and benefit To achieve our objectives, we bring together a team of Nepali and international researchers from a range of disciplines, including geoscience, social science and the humanities, who have track records in various facets of this issue. Together, we aim to: (1) develop new fundamental data and evidence to underpin decision-making, (2) establish pathways for getting the best possible information to those who need it, in a format and timeframe that are useful and usable, (3) think critically about how multi-hazards and risks can be effectively managed, and (4) nurture an environment that supports the young researchers and practitioners who will be the future of disaster risk management in Nepal. We ground our proposal within the context of our long-term community-based work with rural residents in Nepal, and reflect upon their articulations of the need to make better decisions to reduce the risks that they face. We also build upon our work on managing risks with the Government of Nepal and the United Nations, who coordinate disaster planning in the country. The Government, UN, and major development and humanitarian organisations have been involved from the outset in developing this proposal to ensure an agile, joined-up, evidence-based approach to multi-hazard and risk management.
Do agricultural microplastics undermine food security and sustainable development in developing countries?
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project which aims to quantify the risk that conventional macro-, micro- and nano-plastics pose to the long-term health of agricultural ecosystems.
Do agricultural microplastics undermine food security and sustainable development in developing countries?
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Project which aims to quantify the risk that conventional macro-, micro- and nano-plastics pose to the long-term health of agricultural ecosystems.
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