Gran Tescual Indigenous Reservation Climate Plan

Gran Tescual Indigenous Reservation Climate Plan

Gran Tescual Indigenous Reservation Climate Plan

Delivery partner: CIASE

Project summary: This project has been proposed by indigenous women from an intersectional approach, this proposal aims to enhance the living conditions of the Pastos indigenous people residing in the Gran Tescual Reservation. This objective will be achieved through a comprehensive approach that involves researching biodiversity conservation and integrating indigenous knowledge to preserve their biocultural heritage. Additionally, the project will advocate for climate action, considering ethnic and gender considerations at the local, regional, and continental levels. To accomplish this, the project will focus on empowering the community by strengthening their ancestral knowledge, fostering inclusivity, and driving substantial changes in climate change policies. Ultimately, the overarching goal is to safeguard ecosystems, elevate the well-being of indigenous communities, and make a positive impact on biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and the resilience of natural systems.

Andean Crop Diversity for Climate Change

Delivery partner: International Potato Center

Project summary: This project aims to strengthen the resilience of Andean agriculture by leveraging traditional potato and mashua varieties and genebank resources. Through an integrated and interdisciplinary approach, climate adaptation will be promoted and food security improved. Applied methods will involve participatory evaluations, nutritional analyses, market appraisals, genotyping and restoration of lost biodiversity. Transformational change will be achieved through the integration of research, knowledge sharing, innovations, and enhanced market access. The project will employ a comprehensive communication strategy to share key findings and foster policy engagement. It will also create lasting benefits by endorsing diversity conservation, catalyzing transformational change, and applying advanced agricultural technologies.

Ecosystem services under climate change for Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)

Delivery partner: Birdlife International

Project summary: This project aims to inform site management and protection strategies for Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in Ecuador by generating robust knowledge on the ecosystem services delivered by these sites and their beneficiaries, as well as their exposure and resilience under climate change. This new evidence of the impacts on livelihoods of climate change and different management or protection options, and the resulting recommendations, will directly support more effective implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework ‘30×30 target’, and lead to better-informed decision-making for nature and people

The Flourishing Landscapes Programme

Countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Vietnam

Delivery Partner: University of Oxford

Summary: The Flourishing Landscapes Programme (FLP) addresses the triple challenge of livelihoods, climate change, and biodiversity loss at tropical forest frontiers. It will develop novel landscape-scale transdisciplinary research, via a new network of scientists and practitioners, to investigate strategies to both biodiversity and the climate resilience of smallholder farmers. By investigating agroforestry and community-led reforestation as nature-based solutions (NbS), the FLP addresses key knowledge gaps regarding the role of biodiversity in maximising nature’s contributions to people (NCPs) in agricultural landscapes. Building on this, via a human-centred design approach applied in Ghana, Ecuador and Viet Nam in coffee and cocoa production landscapes, the FLP will co-design, with rural communities, a citizen-led biodiversity monitoring toolkit to empower communities to utilise adaptive management to harness NCPs in their production. To showcase the value of the research data sets and citizen-science approaches, we will lead a co-design process with farmers, value chain actors and the insurance industry to explore risk sharing mechanisms that incentivise value chain investments in nature.

 

The GCBC Research Grant Competition 2 (RGC2) is now officially open for applications!

The Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate (GCBC) is a UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme that funds research into nature-based solutions to climate change and poverty reduction.

We are pleased to announce the official launch of the GCBC second Research Grant Competition (RGC2)!

Theme – Unlocking Nature: Driving innovation in how biodiversity can support climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods through practice and governance

For this call, we are looking for project concepts with a total budget between £100k and £1m (GBP) and a duration of 12 – 36 months, commencing from November 1, 2024. There is scope for different sizes (£100k-£250k; £250k-£500k; £500-£750k; £750-£1m) depending on the type or nature of the research to be funded. This will range from the smaller desk-based and locally focused projects to larger initiatives with research replicated in different localities/ countries and upscaling/ replicating proven solutions in an innovative approach.

GCBC invites project concept submissions that focus their research at the intersection of the GCBC’s three focus areas:

  • Climate change
  • Livelihoods and poverty alleviation
  • Biodiversity

The call will fund a portfolio of projects in ODA-eligible countries in the programme’s three focus regions (Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa), including Small Island Developing States (SIDS); which address the evidence gaps and from which the learning, solutions, tools, and methodology can be upscaled and replicated in other regions or countries.

We are looking for submissions that include novel and innovative approaches and project proposals relevant to the overarching theme and related sub-themes. View the Theme Paper

Throughout the application period, potential applicants are invited to join our informative webinars.

Register here for our next webinar

Applications are now officially open! The closing date for receipt of applications for Stage 1 is 17:00hrs GMT on March 17th, 2024.

Apply Now

Related resources:

Theme paper: This paper sets out the rationale and background for the theme of the second GCBC Research Grant Competition (RGC2) and the sub-themes where there are opportunities for interventions, that can make a difference in applying a systems approach. View the Theme Paper

Research strategy: This Research Strategy sets out the vision through the theory of change and ambition for a systems approach (Section 2) for the GCBC programme to ensure that new scientific evidence, knowledge and partnerships developed support the poor directly or indirectly, with improved livelihoods and resilience to climate change, while sustainably managing and using biodiversity. View the Research Strategy

RGC2 Stage 1 – ITA Overview: Download here

Project Concept Note Form (offline copy): Download here

GCBC Privacy Policy: Download here

RGC2 List of Eligible Countries: Download here

Webinar resources:

Webinar 1: Introducing the RGC2 theme (January 22, 29)

Download the webinar recording here

Download the slide deck here

Webinar 2: Walkthrough the RGC2 concept note, application process, & e-platform (February 5)

Download the webinar recording here

Download the slide deck here

Webinar 3: Partnerships (February 21)

Download the slide deck here 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature Transition Support Programme (NTSP project)

Countries: Colombia and Ecuador

Partners: UK: UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC); Colombia: Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute; Ecuador: Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INABIO); US: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), University of Minnesota

Summary: The Nature Transition Support Programme (NTSP) is an ambitious research programme aiming to support partner countries identify pathways towards an economy that is embedded within nature, as articulated by the Dasgupta Review. NTSP engages a combination of UK-based and global experts, in-country specialists as well as representatives from partner governments to make the case for an economic transition, developing a set of options for sustainable growth based on predicted impacts to natural capital and prosperity of different approaches to land use.

 

 

Safeguarding biodiversity and climate resilience (SABIOMA project)

Country: Argentina

Partners: UK: UK Centre of Ecology & Hydrology; Argentina: University of Buenos Aires, The National University of Córdoba, The National University of Tucuman, The Catholic University of Salta

Summary: SABIOMA looks to develop integrative solutions to design nature-based solutions that promote biodiversity, increase resilience to climate change and contribute to sustainable livelihoods in Argentina’s agro-ecosystems.

Related links: SABIOMA

Impacts of kelp harvesting for marine biodiversity and ecosystem services (KELPER2 project)

Countries: Argentina, Chile, Peru

Partners: UK: Newcastle University, Marine Biological Association, Scottish Association for Marine Science; Latin America: IMARPE (Peru), IBIOMAR (Argentina), Catholic University of Chile (Chile)

Summary: Wild kelp harvesting is an important industry in Latin American countries, especially in Chile and Peru, with over 40% of global brown algal landings originating from these two countries and where over 13,000 people are directly employed by the industry. With previous work showing that poorly managed kelp harvesting alters the structure and formation of kelp forests, KELPER2 aims to explore the drivers that reduce the resilience of kelp forests and their blue carbon potential to different sustainable harvesting regimes.

Optimising the long-term management of invasive species affecting biodiversity and the rural economy using adaptive management (CONTAIN project)

Countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile

Partners: UK: University of Aberdeen, Queen’s University Belfast; Latin America: Unesp (São Paulo State University, Brazil), CONICET (Argentina), Centro de Humedales Río Cruces (Chile), Agricultural and Livestock Service – SAG (Chile)

Summary: The CONTAIN project works across the Latin America region with the aim of realising the multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits and co-benefits of managing Invasive Alien Species (IAS) in a cost-effective manner. The project’s objectives are to:

  • Move from efficacy to efficiency when evaluating IAS management, by considering wider costs and benefits associated with each management action, such as those that scale up with the number of invaders and costs associated with ecosystem services changes brought about by IAS.
  • Rigorously evaluate empirically and through modeling under what circumstances invasive trees deliver valuable carbon sequestration ecosystem service that could be traded-off against the loss of carbon above and below ground, by native plant communities, loss of biodiversity, and ecosystem service and resilience. Hence informing a lively ongoing debate on the pros and cons of carbon sequestration by invasive trees, a potential nature-based solution.
  • Evaluate how incentives, compensation for the loss of income, and sources of income may contribute to the sustainability of participatory control of IAS for rural communities so heavily affected by IAS that their livelihoods are in peril.

A trait-based understanding of Latin American biodiversity programme forest biodiversity and resilience (ARBOLES project)

Countries: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru

Partners: UK: 4 universities (Leeds, Lancaster, Oxford and Imperial College London) and the Natural History Museum; Latin America: Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (Argentina), Universidad Austral de Chile (Chile), National Institute for Space Research (Brazil), Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana (Peru)

Summary: The Amazon rainforest occupies a uniquely important place in the Earth System. Spanning an area of 5.5 million km, the Amazon’s forests are the most biodiverse on the planet, absorb 5-10% of global CO2 emissions and sustain rainfall regionally.  However, the invaluable ecosystem and climate services provided by Amazon rainforests are currently under severe threat from deforestation and changing climate. Concerns have been raised that continued forest loss and climate change may lead to a tipping point, beyond which forests would no longer be sustained and replaced by savanna vegetation. The global change threat to the Amazon is most pronounced in southern Amazonia, where deforestation, maximum temperature increases and reduced dry season rainfall have been markedly more pronounced than other Amazon regions.  An understanding of how forests in southern Amazonia are changing and of their sensitivity to global change stressors is imperative for improved prediction and for climate-smart conservation of Amazon forests more generally. ARBOLES aims to understand the plant functional trait basis of LATAM forest biodiversity and resilience, by investigating the sensitivity of important southern Amazonian tree species to two key climatic stressors, heat and drought.