Accelerating Research for Sustainable and Inclusive Solutions

CLARE is funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO-UK) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada), and currently implements applied research projects in 30 countries across Africa and Asia.

Objectives

• The objectives of CLARE-ASEAN are to generate new knowledge and enhance the research capacity for understanding, identifying and enabling the urban resilience to climate change involving strengthening of physical, social and governance aspects.

Aims

• Specifically, CLARE-ASEAN aims to:
  • Enable socially inclusive and sustainable actions to support resilience to climate change and natural hazards, including through nature-based solutions;
  • Scale up research and innovation efforts to provide better information on climate risks, better decision-making tools, guidance, and better climate adaptation solutions to enable transformational change in ASEAN countries.

Themes

• CLARE-ASEAN intends to focus on the following themes, and fund 3 to 4 research projects on these themes:
  • Multifaceted and hazard-agnostic urban-wide or sector-wide response to urban resilience to climate change, including: risks and resilience assessment, hotspot identification, structural aspects and means such as governance, policies, finance, integrated infrastructure, and other solutions that lead to structural change in the way city/sector can be better acted/governed/managed by urban planner/policy/decision makers.
  • Resilience against worsening urban heat extremes, including: assessment, monitoring and heat management options (e.g. infrastructure, technologies, Nature-based Solutions etc.), tradeoffs, and enabling means (e.g. planning, policies, financing, developing heat mitigation/ coping strategies and plans for cities).

Funding Information

• The funding for each project is in the range of CAD (equivalent) 400,000 – 500,000 and the number of projects to be selected in the range of 3 to 4, to be decided upon after receiving applications and evaluating their merits. The project duration will be 15 months from the date of the agreement signed.

Eligibility Criteria

• The target countries of this call are ODA-eligible ASEAN members states. The research must be led by PIs from research/academic/think tank institutions (with independent legal status) in the ODA-eligible ASEAN members states.
• Collaboration with researchers in other ASEAN member states and beyond the ASEAN region are encouraged; institutions beyond ODA-eligible ASEAN member states can be part of the proposal and a small resource (up to 10%) can be allocated.

Evaluation Criteria

• The research proposals will be evaluated against the following (equally-weighted) criteria:
  • Relevance: Relevance of research topic to given context of the place where research will be carried out (clear problem statements, need-based, solution-oriented, address most vulnerable segment of urban system) and in line with objectives stated in the Call for Proposal and overall CLARE Programme.
  • Scientific quality, research design and methodology: Clarity regarding research gaps, potential for new knowledge, robustness of research design and methodologies, expected quality of research and deliverables.
  • Proposal’s strength in view of project’s feasibility: Research strength and scholarship of the research team, and the practicality of research plan from the viewpoints of time, resources, expertise, and network.
  • Positioning for impact: Potentials for the project to make the intended impact with identified/targeted audiences including planners and decision makers, leading to solutions. Research could address long-term issues but there should be enough guidance for solutions that can be pursued immediately.
  • Fostering network-approach to research: Multi-country (more than one) institutions and Co-PIs and clear demonstration of collaborations and partnerships within and across researchers in the region and beyond.
  • GESI contribution: Gender equality and inclusion principles in the design, implementation, monitoring, and communications, including GEI expertise in the team, local stakeholders, how communities, including underrepresented groups are engaged, equitable partnerships, capacity strengthening for GESI work.

For more information, visit AIT.