By Bruce Currie-Alder, Marie-Eve Landry, and Georgina Cundill Kemp, CARIAA program management team
From achieving the engagement of the private sector in discussions about climate vulnerability and resilience in Senegal, to contributing to Botswana’s districts development planning country-wide, the Orissa State Climate Change Action Plan in India, and the National Adaptation Plan in Nepal, CARIAA has demonstrated a solid impact at scale. Across the program, new and strengthened relationships with key stakeholders and networks have led to increased recognition and uptake of CARIAA research results, with over 30 documented examples of contributions to policy and planning activities at local, national and international scales.
Also, CARIAA has generated significant contributions to the knowledge base on climate change resilience, with over 250 peer-reviewed outputs including more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 150 other peer-reviewed outputs (e.g. working papers, briefs, conference papers). Overall, 95% of the peer-reviewed outputs were collaboratively written, 69% included people from different institutions, 56% included authors from different countries, 47% were Southern lead, and 43% included north-south collaboration.
CARIAA has demonstrated that it is more than the sum of its parts. The collaboration within and across consortia has generated productive and fruitful spaces where knowledge and new initiatives have been co-created, even informing, in some cases, global processes like the IPCC reports.
Looking forward, we should keep an eye on evolving opportunities and we should build on the momentum of CARIAA to seek further impact, where relevant. Some of those opportunities include connections to the Climate & Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), the Global Centre on Adaptation, and eventually to other global interdisciplinary research hubs.
CDKN is a “knowledge accelerator” supporting engagement and peer learning in nine countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia. This initiative, currently funded by IDRC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands, will support some of CARIAA’s research into use legacy, particularly in terms of in-country engagement and peer learning. Following two recent regional calls for proposals (Africa & Asia) led by CDKN and aimed at enhancing existing research uptake efforts, CDKN has recently announced that 2 projects submitted by CARIAA consortia in Africa have been selected for funding (up to 60,000 USD each). The results from the call in Asia are still pending. Those projects will support “last mile activities”, thus maximising the impact of the consortia beyond CARIAA.
The Global Centre on Adaptation seeks to raise visibility and political importance of climate adaptation, bridge knowledge gaps and catalyse bold solutions to help societies becoming more resilient to climate-related threats. In partnership with IDRC, the Global Centre on Adaptation will support early and mid-career professionals from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to contribute to the global adaptation agenda and to the pressing adaptation challenges in the context of the work of the Global Commission on Adaptation.
Also, global interdisciplinary research hubs like the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) led by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are multiplying. Those hubs could represent opportunities for research institutions involved under CARIAA to build on their expertise and experience and engage on new research collaboration around global areas of interest.
Recognizing the importance of continued investments in climate actions, IDRC and DFID are also looking to further the outcomes realized in CARIAA by seizing opportunities for additional impact and leveraging the strong relationships created with policy and practice.