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Upcoming funding opportunity: Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE)

 
The Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) initiative is pleased to announce that its first public call for concept notes will be launched in April 2022. CLARE supports research to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards across Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Women farming near the water
Panos pictures / Justin Jin

Announced during the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26), CLARE is a partnership between IDRC and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 

The recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability emphasizes the urgent need for adaptation, and the critical need for solutions that cut across sectors and systems to address social inequities and enable a more climate-resilient future for everyone.    

CLARE aims to respond to this challenge by maximizing the uptake of existing knowledge, driving development of new knowledge, strengthening capacities from research to action and supporting socially inclusive, practical action. 

Upcoming CLARE call for concept notes 

The first step will be a forthcoming call for concept notes aimed at identifying a short list of transdisciplinary teams motivated to conduct action-oriented research related to one (or more) of CLARE’s three research themes: 

  • Understanding climate risk: research to improve our understanding of the risks associated with climate and natural hazards, by addressing gaps in the underpinning science.  

  • Risk-informed early action: research to improve risk-informed anticipatory action to reduce humanitarian and extreme impacts of weather, climate variability and the compounding and cascading interaction of natural hazards.  

  • Developing in a changing climate: research to inform development in a changing climate; action that builds resilience in the present climate and adapts to future climate.  

CLARE seeks concept notes from teams that convene novel coalitions of actors — partnerships that include organizations that link research to action and may include universities, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, civil society groups, the private sector and knowledge-brokering organizations. Projects will also be expected to contribute to and participate in program-wide exchange and learning. 

The CLARE portfolio of projects 

CLARE aims to support a diverse portfolio of projects spanning the research themes mentioned above, and among eligible climate-vulnerable countries in Africa and Asia-Pacific. Selected projects will strengthen capacity to do and use research to respond to the climate-change challenge, and display strong southern leadership. Collectively, the portfolio will bridge the communities of humanitarian assistance, climate science and adaptation practice.  

As research for impact (R4I) is a core element of CLARE, it is anticipated that selected projects will have a strong focus on achieving impact. This should include a needs-oriented, solutions-focussed, transdisciplinary approach to co-producing knowledge, as well as the inclusion of knowledge-brokering expertise and strategy.  

Applications will need to outline how the proposed research will advance and inform socially inclusive action for adaptation and resilience to climate change and/or climate-related risks. Proposals must also consider gender equality and inclusion as integral to just and sustainable climate action. 

Funding available through this upcoming call 

There will be two sizes of funding available through this call, recognizing that opportunities to contribute to knowledge and action exist in different contexts, at different scales, and could involve various combinations of actors: 

  1. Smaller projects - for grants of up to CAD1.5 million for up to 42 months.  

  1. Larger projects - for grants of between CAD6 million and CAD8 million for up to 42 months. 

From this two-stage call (first for concept notes, followed by an invitation to short-listed teams to submit full proposals), we expect to fund roughly eight smaller projects and eight larger projects for a total of up to CAD56 million.   

The launch of the CLARE call for concept notes is anticipated in April 2022, with concept notes due eight weeks later. Full proposals will be due in September 2022.  

More information will be available when the call for concept notes is launched. If you have any questions about this upcoming funding opportunity, please contact us at CLAREcalls@idrc.ca

Further details on CLARE are available here

This upcoming call is anticipatory, and pending available funds.