Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund Round 4

Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is the fifth most lucrative transnational crime, worth up to £17bn a year globally. As well as threatening species with extinction, IWT destroys vital ecosystems. IWT also fosters corruption, feeds insecurity, and undermines good governance and the rule of law. The UK government is committed to tackling illegal trade of wildlife products. Defra manages the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, which is a competitive grants scheme with the objective of tackling illegal wildlife trade 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 Over £23 million has been committed to 75 projects since the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund was established in 2013; five projects were awarded in 2014 (via applications to the Darwin Initiative), fourteen in 2015, fifteen in 2016, thirteen in 2017, fourteen in 2018 and in the latest round in 2019. This round of funding includes the following projects (details of which can be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/811381/iwt-project-list-2019.pdf): IWT048, IWT049, IWT050, IWT051, IWT052, IWT053, IWT054, IWT055, IWT056, IWT057, IWT058, IWT059, IWT0760, IWT061.

Darwin Initiative Round 29

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.

Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund Round 8

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.

• 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 round of funding includes the following projects: IWTEX001, IWTEV001-008, IWT108-120. Further information can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/illegal-wildlife-trade-challenge-fund-iwtcf (Language: English)

British Academy Core - Challenge-led grants: Sustainable Development

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

This programme funds excellent, policy-oriented UK research, aimed at addressing the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and advancing the UK’s Aid Strategy. It supports researchers in the humanities and the social sciences working to generate evidence on the challenges and opportunities faced in developing countries and respond to the Sustainable Development Goals. The Academy is particularly keen to encourage applications from the humanities in this round.

SFC - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Formula GCRF funding to the Scottish Funding Council to support Scottish higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their three-year institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Scottish HEIs in proportion to their Research Excellence Grant (REG). In FY19/20 funding was allocated to 18 Scottish higher education institutes to support existing ODA grant funding and small projects. GCRF has now supported more than 800 projects at Scottish institutions, involving over 80 developing country partners.

Global Challenges Research Fund Evaluation

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The overall purpose of the GCRF evaluation is to assess the extent to which GCRF has achieved its objectives and contributed to its intended impacts.

Transformation Project - ODA Reporting Tool (ODART)

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The Reporting ODA Digital Service (RODA) is the data submission, processing, reporting repository system for data on BEIS R&I ODA Eligible Programmes delivered by Delivery Partners

UUKi Delivery Support

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

These are delivery cost for shared learning workshops/training and best practice (for current and future applicants) on ODA assurance, eligibility, reporting and partnership working through either the NF and GCRF

ODA website - cross-cutting for both ODA funds

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

This is the website for NF and GCRF consortia that promotes funding calls and impact case studies as well as publishing report such as the annual report and monitoring and evaluation documentation.

Ad-hoc GCRF activity on BEIS Finance system

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Increased contributions towards a range of research projects jointly funded with DFID, and funding for the Devolved Administrations for disbursement to universities within the devolved regions to fund the full economic cost of GCRF ODA research.

DfE NI - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Grant to Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland to enable Northern Irish higher education institutes to carry out pre-agreed ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. For Queen’s University Belfast in FY2019/20 this included: workshops in Cambodia, Vietnam, South Africa, and Uganda about health and education; 11 pilot projects spanning 16 eligible countries (Angola, Burundi, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe); and additional support to GCRF and NF-funded activities. For Ulster University in FY2019/20 funding supported six pump-priming projects on: LMIC maternal, neonatal and child health; PTSD in Rwanda; Decision-Making in Policy Making in Africa and Central Asia; and hearing impairment and dementia in China.

HEFCW - GCRF QR funding

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Additional GCRF funding to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to support Welsh higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Welsh HEIs in line with their research council grant income. In FY19/20 funding was allocated to Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Cardiff University and Swansea University. In FY19/20, the funding was used to fund: the full economic cost of existing ODA eligible activities (e.g. already funded by GCRF); small ODA-eligible projects; fellowships to ODA-eligible researchers; and to increase collaboration and impact. 53 ODA-eligible countries have been reported as benefiting from the funded work, with Brazil and India the most frequently mentioned. By region, the largest number of projects were based in the LDC’s (Least Developed Countries) in Asia, South America, and East Africa, with only a few projects in the middle-income countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.

ODA BEIS analysts - cross-cutting for both ODA funds

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

ODA BEIS analysts. For the monitoring and evaluation and learning for NF and GCRF

AMS Coherence and Impact - Global Health Policy Workshops

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Researchers play an important role in driving sustainable impacts on health and welfare by participating in policy development. In many LMICs, poverty correlates with poor health; we are working with partners in LMICs to convene researchers and stakeholders to generate independent, expert health policy advice, based on evidence from research.

Royal Academy of Engineering Core - Africa Catalyst

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

GCRF Africa Catalyst aims to strengthen professional engineering bodies in sub-Saharan Africa so that they can effectively promote the profession, share best practice and increase local engineering capacity, to help drive development. This is supported by high-quality research focusing on expanding the evidence base for the importance of robust engineering institutions and the role they play in delivering sustainable growth, and mapping engineering capacity and diversity in sub-Saharan Africa.

Royal Academy of Engineering Core - Higher Education Partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The Higher Education Partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa Programme (HEP SSA) – supported by the Anglo American Group Foundation and the UK Government through the Global Challenges Research Fund – was established by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2016, following the successful pilot scheme, Enriching Engineering Education Programme. COVID-19

Royal Academy of Engineering Core - Frontiers of Engineering for Development

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Frontiers of Engineering for Development is a series of interdisciplinary symposia that facilitates national and international collaboration to tackle global development challenges. The event brings together a select group of around 60 emerging UK and global engineering and international development leaders from industry and academia to discuss pioneering technical work and cutting-edge research for international development from a diversity of engineering fields. Seed funding is available to progress some of the best ideas coming out of the event. COVID-19

Peacekeepers As Soldiers And Humanitarians: The Impact Of Contradictory Roles And Responsibilities On The Protection Mandate of Peacekeepers

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The project conducts research on the currently two largest African peace operation, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) and the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Both missions have complex mandates and combine military (combat), political (stabilisation/statebuilding) and humanitarian goals. The protection of civilians became a cornerstone of both missions. Military peacekeepers are often required to straddle combat and pacific responsibilities, combining military, diplomatic and humanitarian roles. They fight violent actors who are often not easily distinguishable from civilians, patrol roads and convoy humanitarian deliveries, while they are simultaneously requested to develop relations with communities affected by violence, to mediate conflicts and often also to provide humanitarian goods. The project explores how UN and AU peacekeepers in the DRC and in Somalia fulfil their protection mandate from the perspective of protection providers and protection recipients: military peacekeepers (provider), civilians (recipients) and humanitarian worker (recipients and ideally partners of peacekeepers). It will provide an in-depth and differentiated account on how military peacekeepers navigate their increasingly complex roles, swap between combat and pacific responsibilities and how their protection efforts are experienced at the recipients' end. This knowledge is crucial in improving protection efforts. The findings of the research will be shared in round tables with all three actor groups. The round tables aim at receiving feed-back on the research. More importantly, they also aim at providing a platform for communication and at stimulating dialogue between military peacekeepers, civil humanitarian actors and civilians. Round tables will be organised by local civil society organisations who partner in the research project, and it is expected that they will uphold communication links even after the research ended. The findings, i.e. the experiences of the providers and recipients of protection, will feed into a peacekeeping training module. The module will be developed in cooperation with the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC) in Nairobi. The training will be piloted during a workshop with AU and UN trainers and representatives of military headquarters and military trainers of troop contributing countries. The evaluation of the participants will help to fine-tune the training and to finalize a training handbook that will be made publically available and shared with peacekeeping training centres and military headquarters of troop contributing countries.

Improving healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese refugees and IDPs

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

This project aims to help displaced people to access appropriate healthcare for long-term physical and mental health conditions associated with protracted displacement, conflict, and gendered violence. The category of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) receives a great deal of attention. However, there is limited research on how gendered violence, including violence relating to sexuality, is experienced in displacement contexts. There is also limited understanding of how gender, sexuality, and related violence affect access to healthcare, and how that can result in neglected chronic health conditions, particularly mental ill-health. Similarly, much attention is devoted to immediate healthcare needs following SGBV, but longer-term physical and mental health conditions are not adequately addressed. Displaced people face multiple barriers when seeking healthcare in protracted displacement settings, with the result that long-term health conditions are often misdiagnosed and mistreated or undiagnosed and untreated. This project examines access to care and the responsiveness of healthcare providers for displaced Congolese and Somalis in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somali, Kenya, and South Africa. Eastern DRC and Somalia have both experienced long-term conflict and displacement since the early 1990s, leading to large populations of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) within these countries and large refugee populations across the region. Conflict and displacement in Eastern DRC and Somalia are characterised by high rates of sexual and gender-based violence, and victims are stigmatised through prevailing gender and sexual norms. Existing health research tends to focus on the immediate aftermath of violence rather than on long-term mental and physical health conditions. The project has eight field sites in four countries. The four IDP field sites are one formal camp and one informal settlement each in Eastern DRC and Somalia, both of which have weak health systems. The four refugee field sites are Congolese and Somali settlements in Kenya and South Africa, which have different health systems and different refugee laws and policies. The project brings together researchers and practitioners from international development, migration studies, gender studies, medical anthropology, public health and health policy, and medical sciences to undertake interdisciplinary empirical research in these protracted displacement contexts. Panzi Foundation (DRC) and War Trauma Foundation (Netherlands) will guide teams of researchers based at the University of Edinburgh (UK), the University of Kinshasa (DRC), the Somali Institute for Development and Research (Somalia), Amref International University (Kenya), and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa). Project activities are designed to: 1) enhance the capacity of partner organisations; 2) support the inclusion of displaced people in healthcare systems; 3) foster international networks.

Protracted Displacement Economies

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Around the world refugees and displaced people remain in limbo, unable to return home, unwanted where they are living and facing increasing difficulties to go anywhere else. The majority of refugees in the world have been in these situations for more than five years, a threshold usually referred to as 'protracted'. As crises become prolonged, the limitations of the humanitarian response have long been recognised as insufficient and inadequate. Refugees and Internally Displaced People caught up in these protracted situations often speak of watching their lives 'draining away'. The model of support offered to displaced people is known by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) as 'care and maintenance' but perhaps more accurately by advocates of a radical change to this policy as the 'warehousing' of refugees. Global policy interest is shifting from short term humanitarianism to longer term development focused responses to protracted displacement. This was most recently indicated by the Global Compact on Refugees, in December 2018. The Refugee Compact introduces positive language around the long-term self reliance of refugees. This project responds to this renewed political will to find new solutions to protracted displacement and builds on a large body of research and advocacy work in this area. The project investigates the replacement of the care and maintenance model with a new approach: the protracted displacement economy. The protracted displacement economy introduces two key innovations that will contribute to this original analysis as well the potential for impact. First, it is a whole of society approach. The focus is not just on displaced people but the 'displacement affected community', that includes the heterogeneous 'host' population, amongst others. The second key innovation is a fundamental shift in the understanding of the transactions that drive the protracted displacement economy. Financial transactions are the stuff of most economic analysis, yet key human interactions and exchanges or gifts, collective organisation, care work and mutual aid are largely non-financial. Research will involve ten countries, five pairs of countries each separated by an international border: The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)/Uganda, Ethiopia/Somalia, Lebanon/Syria, Myanmar/Thailand, Pakistan/Afghanistan.These ten countries encompass the most serious protracted displacement crises in the world. Research will be conducted with partners in one of each pair of countries and will be attentive to the cross-border dynamics of the protracted displacement economy. International partners are: The University of Kinshasa (DRC), The University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the NGOs Basmeh & Zeitooneh and Sawa (Lebanon), the think tank Covenant Institute (Myanmar) and the University of Peshawar (Pakistan). In each of these five countries, three locations will be selected for empirical research, including at least one urban neighbourhood and at least one camp in each country. Over three years, these 15 locations will be involved in community discussions, large scale surveys and qualitative interviews. Key stakeholders in this process from further afield will be involved in regular meetings so that every stage in the research is informed by relevant expertise. The project will introduce the completely new approach of video narratives, training groups of people in each location to produce five minute videos of the protracted displacement economy that will then be dubbed and shared across all research sites. These films contribute to a wide range of innovative outputs that highlight the operation of the protracted displacement economy. Displaced people develop their own economic activities, including non-financial practices such as sharing and mutual aid as well as entrepreneurial activities. With time, community organisations begin to thrive. The project aims to support this process so that displaced people are able to look to the future with hope.