Climate Adaptation and Resilience: Research for Impact Hub

The Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) programme is a £110m, UK-Canada framework research programme on Climate Adaptation and Resilience, aiming to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards in Africa and Asia-Pacific. CLARE places significant emphasis on getting knowledge and evidence into use. CLARE is an action-orientated research programme, with each project in the CLARE portfolio designed to produce knowledge and actionable adaptation solutions and tools in collaboration with end users, that result in the uptake and use of new policies, approaches, and tools that increase the resilience of vulnerable communities.

CLARE is a joint initiative co-designed and funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)  and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).  The UK is the majority funder of the initiative, providing 85% of the ‘CLARE Research’ funding and funding CLARE Services and Partnerships. Canada provides 15% match-funding towards CLARE Research and is its main delivery partner. Both organisations work closely to set the strategic and technical directions of the initiative.

SSN will serve as CLARE’s  Research for Impact (R4I) Hub from May 2023 to October 2026. On 3^rd December 2023, the R4I Hub was officially launched in Dubai at a COP28 side-event hosted in the UK Pavilion. The CLARE R4I Hub supports the uptake of existing research to make it useful in new decision-making contexts that support local adaptation needs and priorities. With the support of local knowledge brokers, the R4I Hub is identifying short-term opportunities to pull together existing research so that it can lead to action on the ground (see more detail on the R4I Opportunities Fund below). In addition, the R4I Hub leads a community of practice within the CLARE programme, encouraging the sharing of learning and best practice amongst 17 CLARE-funded research projects, as well as facilitating the sharing and repurposing of past research investments made by the UK, Canada and others to bring this knowledge into use in developing countries in Africa and Asia. Learning on how to achieve research for impact from these projects will be shared towards the end of the programme. ICLEI South Asia will be working closely with the SSN team as an external partner.

The research themes covered by the CLARE programme are:

The R4I Opportunities Fund

Past adaptation and resilience research programmes have generated a lot of insightful and useful data, tools, and approaches, and there is great potential for these research findings/outputs to be directed towards transformative outcomes. A key part of CLARE’s theory of change is to enable the uptake of this existing wealth of research to inform science-based decision making. CLARE has made resources available to surface and drive the uptake of existing research for impact through an R4I Opportunities Fund.

These funding opportunities will be short-term, small-scale interventions that support the needs of decision makers in Africa and Asia to adapt to climate change through the use of existing research and evidence. Opportunities will be scoped directly with in-country stakeholders and draw on local expertise to enable the use of existing research and evidence in new and creative ways.

Purpose of the R4I Opportunities Fund

The purpose of the Opportunities Fund is to enable the tailoring of existing knowledge towards useful outcomes that support the needs identified by decision-makers and other knowledge users. Towards this purpose, the CLARE R4I Hub will:

• collate the needs expressed by decision-makers and other knowledge users;
• assess for eligibility and, if needed, prioritise the requests based on set criteria; and
• fulfil these established needs through identifying, directing, adapting, and deploying existing research outputs.

The Opportunities Fund is an essential tool for achieving CLARE’s strategic objectives of:

• getting research and evidence into use; and
• strengthening agency in the Global South to do and use research on adaptation.

Types of organisations eligible as beneficiaries

The Opportunities Fund will support the needs of government, quasi-government agencies (such as parastatals, government-backed research institutions, etc.), non-government organisations (NGOs), and civil society organisations (CSOs) able to put evidence into action.

Types of activities supported

Resources from the Opportunities Fund are not available for conducting new primary research. The opportunities fund is designed specifically for identifying, adapting and/or positioning existing research to meet expressed needs and/or for identifying and addressing other barriers to research uptake.

Criteria

Determining whether The Opportunities Fund can support research uptake activities is assessed on the basis that all relevant contextual factors are considered and addressed in the scoping of the proposed activities, that they are likely to be sustainable, that activities are both responsive to and aligned with gender equity and inclusivity (GEI) considerations, and that they align strongly with CLARE themes.

Key considerations

Funded interventions should range from 15,000 to 75,000 Canadian Dollars and must be designed to be completed within a 12-month timeframe. The R4I Hub will source and procure the services of researchers, technical experts, and others to provide services that address the needs expressed by qualifying organisations. Service providers will be drawn from a diverse roster of experts established by the R4I Hub for this purpose. The selection of service providers will promote local expertise and/or the capacitation of local experts in partnership with international experts.

Contact us

CLARE R4I Hub: clarer4i@oldssn.devcorner.co.za

Opportunities Fund: Contact Grace at clareof@oldssn.devcorner.co.za  to discuss your interest