CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE (CLARE)

CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE (CLARE) Climate change increasingly and disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable— especially women, girls, and marginalized communities across the Global South.

Addressing the challenges posed by climate change and inequality is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and beyond.

What is CLARE? Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) is a research framework programme, initially funded for five years, supporting adaptation through action-oriented research and enabling capacity to build resilience, address knowledge gaps, and boost the response to the climate crisis in the Global South.

A partnership between the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), CLARE enables socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience and reduce vulnerability to risks from climate change and natural hazards for the most vulnerable.

CLARE addresses the urgent need to scale up research and innovation efforts to provide better information on risks, better decision-making tools and better adaptation solutions to enable transformational change.

Despite efforts to mitigate climate change, we are already locked into warming for years to come. Failure to adapt and build resilience to climate change will undermine global efforts to alleviate poverty and inequality.

700 million people are currently living in poverty 1.5 billion people living in climate hot spot regions 3x the number of people are exposed to climate risk at +2 °C compared to 1.5 °Ci

Adaptation innovations are most effective when they are locally conceived, locally tested, and locally owned.

Yet there are still significant gaps in our knowledge as well as barriers to action.

Given the scale and urgency required, in addition to generating research, CLARE will place significant emphasis on getting knowledge and evidence into use.

CLARE will deliver strengthened agency in the Global South to do and use research for adaptation action, as well as actionable adaptation solutions to support the most vulnerable.

What does CLARE do?

Through a careful design, CLARE ensures opportunities for research, collaboration and learning, enabling capacity, and supporting research uptake. CLARE will operate as a portfolio programme with multiple competitive research “calls for proposals” over its lifetime. Calls may cover single, multiple or linkages between themes.

CLARE aims to:

n Maximize uptake of existing knowledge by policymakers and practitioners, through the development of climate services, tools, technology, and innovation;

n Drive development of new knowledge to support adaptation and boost resilience among the most vulnerable; n Enable capacity from research to action for sustainable climate-resilient development;

n Support gender-responsive, socially inclusive, practical action by addressing evidence gaps and supporting pilot projects related to social, economic, and political trade-offs and barriers to climate adaptation for the most vulnerable.

CLARE addresses the urgent need for action now, while also anticipating future needs.

Research themes CLARE’s transdisciplinary approach will focus on climate risks through the lens of three adaptation themes and the intersections among them: n Understand climate risk: research to improve our understanding of the risks associated with climate and natural hazards, by addressing gaps in the underpinning science. n Risk-informed early action: research to improve risk-informed anticipatory action to reduce humanitarian impacts of weather, climate variability and related natural hazards.

n 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.

What will CLARE achieve?

CLARE will catalyse strengthened agency in the Global South to do and use research for adaptation action, as well as actionable adaptation strategies to support the most vulnerable.

The following cross-cutting elements of the programme will be adaptively managed by a Programme Delivery Unit and governed by a multi-agency Executive Board: n Fostering learning and collaboration for uptake of evidence into decision making and implementation through cross-cutting knowledge management;

n Enabling capacity among practitioners, researchers, and decision makers (including individuals, communities, governments, NGOs, and private sector) to do and use research for action; n Supporting equitable and diverse partnerships with, and leadership by, people and teams based in the Global South.

The Funding Partnership CLARE is a partnership, co-funded and designed by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), drawing on climate adaption research-into-action expertise from both organisations. It has been deliberately designed to enable other research funders to join.

CLARE is part of Canada and the UK’s efforts to build global climate resilience and adapt to a changing world. CLARE is also a part of the Adaptation & Resilience campaign of the UK Presidency of COP26 in Glasgow.

To learn more, follow us on Twitter: @IDRC_CRDI and @FCDOGovUK

Building on over a decade of experience working and partnering in climate adaptation and resilience, the CLARE programme aims to support action-oriented research in developing countries that addresses the pressing knowledge and action needs for adaptation and resilience for the most vulnerable. An initial scoping, design and bridging phase of CLARE is already underway.

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SOURCE: "24-357 million people exposed to multi-sector climate risks and vulnerable to poverty at 1.5°C (86-1220 million at 2°C) in Hourcade et al (2021) “Scaling up Climate Finance in the Context of Covid-19.” South Korea: Green Climate Fund https://www.greenclimate.fund/scaling-up-climate-finance.

PHOTOS: IDRC, PANOS