Aid by Sector
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
Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Programme
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To support provincial economic development and sustainable energy in Pakistan. The programme objective is to address two binding constraints to economic and urban development in Pakistan: weak planning; and energy. The programme aims • To support Pakistan's poorest province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to plan and finance the infrastructure and investment it needs for growth, jobs and prosperity. • To address Pakistan’s energy crisis by providing innovative financial solutions to industry for the adoption of sustainable energy practices. The programme will also contribute to Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office International Climate Fund (ICF) obligations.
CLARE - CLimate And REsilience Framework Programme
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
CLARE is a framework research programme to develop new, more demand responsive evidence, innovation and capacity to enable developing country governments and communities to better address climate change challenges and opportunities and develop more effective disaster risk management and recovery. The programme will support research to improve our understanding of weather and climate systems across Africa and the likely impacts of future change. It will also support research and innovation focused on low-carbon and climate resilient technology as well as help strengthen local capacity to do and use cutting edge climate research and evidence for development.
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
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.
Pioneering a Holistic approach to Energy and Nature-based Options in MENA for Long-term stability - PHENOMENAL
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To tackle water scarcity, build adaptation and resilience and scale up International Climate Finance in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chain Solutions
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
This activity supports a number of different areas of work which aim to accelerate the climate benefits of the Kigali Amendment (KA) to the Montreal Protocol (MP) and encourage uptake of energy efficient and climate friendly solutions. This includes (1) The creation of an African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chains (ACES) in Rwanda. ACES will accelerate deployment of sustainable (environmental, economic and social) cold-chain solutions throughout Africa. (2) The development and deployment of an HFC outlook model to address information gaps on energy use and energy related CO2 emissions from the refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pumps (RACHP) market. It will assist in reducing cost of the transition for Article 5 countries to the Montreal Protocol and increase the climate benefit of action under the MP. (3) Increasing countries technical capacity and providing insights on global best practice of EE improvements of cooling products in parallel with HFC phase down, through model regulations and sustainable public procurement in ASEAN and Africa.
Championing Inclusivity in Plastic Pollution (CHIPP)
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Championing Inclusivity in Plastic Pollution (CHIPP) comprises two components: (1) £1.6m contribution for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Tide Turners Plastic Challenge (TTPC) (2) £2m contribution to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC) TTPC is a youth environmental education and advocacy initiative which seeks to educate and empower young people on marine plastic pollution and how they can address it in their communities. The objective of this programme is to influence behaviour change, share knowledge, build awareness, and promote inclusive environmental stewardship in young people and give them a voice in the fight against plastic pollution. Its core deliverable is an educational course delivered in partnership with educational institutions. The INC contribution supports the inclusive participation of ODA-eligible country negotiators in the agreement of an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) on plastic pollution by providing travel support and facilitating regional intersessional meetings. Together, CHIPP’s overall objective is to foster an inclusive approach to tackling plastic pollution at all levels in ODA-eligible countries, from young people and communities to international action.
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.
Supporting Montserrat and St Helena to enhance welfare and development through improved environmental management.
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
This programme is delivered by JNCC and aims to improve environmental management. This includes better management of water resources, fisheries and landscapes and to enhance economic security, welfare and development of local communities dependent on the natural environment for their livelihoods. This includes farmers dependent on scarce water resources and island communities where better fisheries management increases food supply and incomes. Landscape scale management enhances security of food and water supply and reduces vulnerability to natural disasters such as drought or storm associated flooding and coastal hurricane storm surge.
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 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.
Delivering Accelerated Family Planning in Pakistan (DAFPAK)
UK - Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO)
To increase access in Pakistan to qualtiy family planning information and services by those who would like to use it, particualrly underserved groups such as rural women. It will directly contribute to Sustainable Development Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being, as well as to the FP2020 target of reaching additional users of family planning.
Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Change Programme
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Funding from UK government to deliver excellent climate research to provide an improved understanding of past climate and enable better projections to underpin national scientific capability and inform domestic and international policy commitments (e.g. Climate Change Act 2008 and UNFCCC negotiations). Climate models and underpinning science developed using MOHCCP funding are publically available and used as the foundation for many projects that aim to build resilience to a changing climate in developing countries. The models are used for developing systems in developing countries to produce climate projections. For example, the models have been used to analyse drought in the Horn of Africa, climate change impacts in Bangladesh and to build resilience to climate change in the Philippines.
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
Towards Low Cost Soil Fertility Sensor Systems for Smallholder Food Security in Kenya
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Food security is one of the "big four" agenda initiatives championed by the Kenyan Government. More than 80% of Kenya's population is dependent upon agriculture for employment, income, or food security needs (FAO) and a large proportion of the population are food insecure, for example 26% of children under 5 years of age suffer from malnutrition (UNICEF). The food security challenge is intensified by: reducing size of land parcels as a result of population growth; farmers being pushed into dryer lower quality land areas vulnerable to drought; conflicts resulting from competition for land; and people dropping out of nomadic life to move to settled communities dependent upon food aid (FAO). To address this, increases in agricultural productivity are needed. An important way to improve crop yield relates to better soil fertility. Optimising fertiliser strategies for soil can be summed up as: Right Source, Right Rate, Right Place, Right Time. For the greatest impact, this requires in-field measurement tools that can be used by farmers to understand the spatial changes in nutrient concentration within a field, and how these vary over time. No technology currently exists that allows this to be carried out at very low cost. The alternative to in-field testing is the use of soil laboratories in Nairobi, but these are expensive to use, far away from the farm and provide a single measurement which is not representative of the whole area farmed. In consequence, most smallholders are in the dark about the nutrition status of their soil and how it changes in response to different soil amendment approaches. This project will help address the measurement challenge by developing a new kind of sensor that can be used by farmers at very low cost to regularly test for two key soil macro-nutrients, called nitrate and phosphate. The project will take inspiration from ancient art and design based printing processes, combined with locally available natural materials (e.g. chimney soot, egg, newspaper and enzymes from plants and bacteria available within Kenya) to make extremely low cost soil sensors. By adopting a "co-creation" based philosophy, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Kenyatta University in Nairobi and Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow will build a collaboration to deliver a step change in sensing technology for smallholder farmers in Kenya. This will be achieved by initially developing the sensor in the UK, employing a researcher from Kenya. Once a proof of concept has been created, the researcher will return to Kenya with the knowledge and understanding to recreate the sensor and test performance in greenhouse trials. The project will also involve a series of workshops where we will engage communities, industry and policy makers to ensure that we create user led solutions to address food security within Kenya. In the long term, this could be delivered to farmers either as a "factory in a box" containing the tools needed for sensor manufacture, or simply as an information pack that shows how to gather the resources required and print sensors. The project could also influence the wider region: 20 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are food insecure (Worldbank, 2022), and face similar challenges. Parallel benefits also exist for UK innovation, where knowledge and learning from this project could support the manufacture of nature based and zero waste sensors to support UK agriculture and the transition to net zero.
Enhancing Indonesia's Disaster Preparedness Through an Innovative Multi-Risk Management Framework with ICT ecosystems
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Indonesia stretches along one of the most tectonically active boundaries in the world. Since 1970, earthquakes in Indonesia have led to over US$20 billion in economic losses and to hundreds of thousands of fatalities, sadly, many preventable with a better understanding of earthquake risk. Seismic risk increases over time and is exacerbated by rapid population growth and urbanisation. One of the greatest risks arises from substandard vulnerable structures, which account for a large proportion of fatalities and comprise most of existing building stock in urban and suburban regions of West Sumatra. Particularly in Padang city, such substandard structures are highly vulnerable and experienced catastrophic collapses during the 2009 West Sumatra earthquake. Whilst the Indonesian government has made some progress towards meeting the objectives set in the UN' Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the risk of vulnerable structures in West Sumatra (one of the least developed areas in Indonesia) remains very high. As a result, there is an urgent need for better disaster preparedness, reliable vulnerability assessments and appropriate seismic risk management strategies to reduce potential losses in future earthquakes. In recent years, Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have been proposed to enhance the quality of data and accuracy of seismic risk calculations. Field data from building images (i.e. building categories, geo-tag location) obtained from deep learning approaches can be used to calculate the empirical vulnerability of buildings, but such information is only useful if it is calibrated with real data and integrated into earthquake risk assessment frameworks. Social media can also provide large amounts of eyewitness data (e.g. video and images) about an earthquake but harnessing this data into useful information for emergency responders, search and rescue workers, and structural engineers is still a challenge and requires the use of big data and artificial intelligence. The aim of this project is to develop an innovative, rapid and efficient framework for multi-hazard seismic risk assessment with ICT ecosystems to enhance West Sumatra's disaster preparedness, using Padang city as a pilot case study. For the first time, the developed framework will consider the effect of earthquakes, tsunami, landslides and liquefaction. The methodology will be subsequently integrated into the innovative management system KERIS. The new framework and KERIS system are expected to support West Sumatra's Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) in coordinating Disaster Risk Reduction efforts and policies in West Sumatra. The collaboration brings together leading institutions of the UK (University of Warwick) and Indonesia (Unversitas Bung Hatta, Institut Teknologi Bandung, and BPBD) with expertise in the fields of structural engineering and ICT. This collaborative project has the following Objectives. 1) Develop a rapid and efficient (on data management and computation) multi-hazard risk assessment methodology including data from ICT ecosystems using Padang as a pilot case study. 2) Propose innovative seismic risk mitigation and DRR management strategies, including a mobile app and the integration of the new framework into a new knowledge-management system (KERIS). 3) To organise workshops, seminars, networking events and visits between staff in the three universities so as to establish new long-term collaborations between them. The outcomes of the proposed research will give stakeholders in West Sumatra innovative and efficient tools for disaster mitigation, which is expected to reduce earthquake-related losses and promote sustainable development in the region.
Seismic Resilience of Egypt's Built Environment: A GIS-Based Framework for Assessment and Mitigation (Egypt-SeReAM)
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Natural disasters can have dire effects on countries, in the form of human casualties/injuries, infrastructure damage, economic and environmental losses. Earthquakes, in particular, are the most damaging as they are responsible for an annual death toll of over 20K and 20% of the total annual economic losses due to natural disasters. In low-income or developing countries, earthquake impacts are exacerbated, leading to substantial human loss, injuries, homelessness, and population displacement. Irreparable infrastructure damage can also have a great economic impact reaching 20% of a country's gross domestic income, leading to disruption of economic growth and development. Acknowledging this problem, there has been growing national interest in assessing regional seismic risk and loss for major cities. Several countries initiated Disaster Risk Management (DRM) programs which make use of the interdisciplinary advances in science and technology to model the complex interaction of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability and compute loss metrics that can be used by stakeholders and decision-makers to quantify of potential structural, economic, and social consequences, identify critical infrastructure components, outline pre-disaster damage mitigation measures and policies, and planning for post-disaster response protocols. Egypt, a lower-income country and one of Africa's most populated countries, is highly susceptible to the impacts of natural hazards (flooding, rising sea levels, and earthquakes). Several major cities, with populations larger than 5M and overly populated urban centers, are subject to high seismic risk triggered by risk drives such as poverty, climate change, decades of poor construction practices, and absence of municipal oversight. Countries with similar urban conditions, such as Albania and Turkey, experienced a wide extent of damage and losses from recent earthquakes. These countries, and others, allocate extensive funding and resources for DRM. On the other hand, the safety and robustness of Egypt's infrastructure is greatly under-researched. Although several studies investigated the seismic hazard for Egypt's major cities, no attention has been paid so far to either collapse risk assessment or loss and damage estimations (urban exposure, vulnerabilities, and resilience). Egypt-SeReAM will build on and further develop existing DRM methodologies to create such a digital framework for assessing the seismic resilience of Egypt's vulnerable built environment. A partnership between the University of Southampton, three of Egypt's top academic and research institutions will undertake this project combining different disciplines spanning urban planning, seismology, and structural engineering. The project will use the city of Alexandria as a pilot case study to establish the building blocks of the DRM framework concerned with built-environment resilience. The seismic vulnerability of Alexandria's urban center will be assessed, in terms of human, structural, and economic losses due to potential damage to the residential building stock. In the process, spatial urban, geotechnical, structural, and hazard data will be collected and an automated digital framework will be developed to quantify risk and loss under potential earthquake scenarios. The project will employ the geographic information system (GIS) mapping system to describe and communicate the earthquake consequences to the government, academia, industry, and public sectors. This will be packaged within an easily-to-use practice-oriented digital workflow that will assist authorities in making effective decisions for seismic protection measures to minimize potential damage and losses (primarily human, but financial as well) in future earthquakes. Through networking, training, and showcasing activities, the project will promote and specifically target Egypt's short- and long-term resilience to natural disasters, in support of its economic development.
Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) Brazil - Calls- tender-UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Collaborative climate science research programme between Brazil and UK to improve understanding of recent climate changes and Brazil’s role in mitigation activities to inform international negotiations; to enhance projections of future weather and climate extremes and impacts to inform decision making and contribute to disaster risk reduction in Brazil. Research hydrological cycle responses to land-use change and climate change over Brazil
Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) Brazil - Calls- tender-UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Collaborative climate science research programme between Brazil and UK to improve understanding of recent climate changes and Brazil’s role in mitigation activities to inform international negotiations; to enhance projections of future weather and climate extremes and impacts to inform decision making and contribute to disaster risk reduction in Brazil. Research in understanding and attributing weather and climate events, and their socio-economic impacts on key food, water and health sectors in Brazil.
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