Applying to the Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund.
RATIONALE AND THEMATIC AREAS
The world is now on the brink of surpassing its target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, despite the initial optimism surrounding the 2015 Paris Agreement. In 2023, the global mean surface temperature reached a record high of 1.45 degrees celsius above the pre-industrial levels, with new extremes recorded throughout 2024. Even if all current climate change commitments were fully delivered upon, there would still be a 2-3 degrees celsius temperature increase, which will profoundly impact food and water security, health, and increase the frequency of shocks.
In a rapidly warming world, climate adaptation must go hand in hand with emissions reductions to secure a livable future and enable development. Climate financing must do both, with developing countries projected to require USD 3.3 trillion in adaptation funding by 2035. Nearly half of the global population is highly vulnerable to climate impacts, a figure that will grow as temperatures rise.
Developing countries bear the heaviest burden of climate adaptation, already experiencing acute impacts of climate change due to an interplay of factors including their geographical and climatic condition, their high dependence on natural resources, and their limited capacity to adapt to a changing climate. Adaptation efforts are especially critical for marginalised and vulnerable groups, including women and young children, older populations, ethnic minorities, Indigenous Peoples, refugees and displaced persons, who are disproportionately affected by climate change.
The challenge of climate adaptation aligns closely with GIF’s core mission: to accelerate innovation that improves the livelihood of millions of the world’s poorest people. Poverty is a key driver of vulnerability, making both countries and individuals more susceptible to climate change impacts. GIF’s focus on poverty reduction is inherently about building the human foundations of resilience and adaptation.
Through its Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund, GIF invests through grant, equity, and debt instruments, in innovations with the potential to scale and support the world’s poorest to build resilience and adaptation. As part of this commitment, we are updating our Climate Strategy setting out our approach to unlocking critical investments in resilience and adaptation, by investing in solutions that can make an outsized difference to the poorest people, and that can be scaled, de-risking them for other investors.
Thematic Areas
Nature-based solutions (NbS)
Healthy ecosystems are foundational to economic stability and community resilience, supporting livelihoods and protecting against natural disasters. Nature-based solutions (NbS) provide multiple co-benefits including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, capturing and storing carbon, and helping communities to adapt to climate risks such as sea-level rise, droughts, floods, and wildfires. Yet, despite their potential, only a small fraction of climate finance, less than 2% of public international climate finance, supports NbS for adaptation and evidence is lacking hindering uptake, representing a missed opportunity to leverage natural systems for climate resilience. Lack of evidence is a barrier to the uptake of nature-based solutions.
As such, we aim to support innovations in NbS that have a direct impact on the poorest across all types of ecosystems, including urban, agricultural and coastal areas. We encourage solutions that address ecosystem protection, restoration, and sustainable management, improving biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Climate and Health
Extreme weather events like heatwaves and droughts, are now a global health threat, with the greatest impact on vulnerable populations, including those living in poverty, women, children, the elderly, and ethnic minorities. Changing climate conditions are increasing heat-related illnesses and deaths. The latest Lancet Countdown report highlights record-breaking climate-related health risks, with 2023 seeing a 167% increase in heat-related mortality. Warming trends could lead to at least 21 million additional deaths by 2050 from risks like extreme heat and infectious diseases. Urgent action is needed to build resilience against climate change-related health impacts, promote climate-resilient health services, and reduce climate-related deaths, particularly in most vulnerable communities.
As such, we are seeking solutions directly tackling the growing and diverse health challenges arising from climate change, especially in vulnerable and underserved communities. These challenges include the rising disease burden of vector-borne, waterborne, and zoonotic diseases; disruptions in health supply chains limiting access to life-saving medicines and vaccines in remote areas; threats to health facilities from floods, storms, and heatwaves; mental health impacts, such as stress and trauma, from climate-related disasters.
Agriculture and food security
Agricultural productivity is directly linked to weather patterns and climate conditions. As climate variability intensifies, risks to food security escalate alongside growing global demand. By 2050, with an anticipated population of 9.5 billion, climate change could reduce agricultural production by up to 17%. Climate change impact on grassland and rangeland productivity will have far-reaching consequences on dairy, meat, and wool production. While impacts vary regionally, the sector as a whole faces urgent challenges that threaten the livelihoods of millions. Addressing these challenges requires a rapid expansion of proven adaptation solutions and significant investment in innovation.
We are seeking to support scalable, climate-resilient innovations that address critical challenges in food and livestock systems. This includes solutions to improve early warning systems for timely climate risk management, enhance drought resilience, reduce post-harvest losses to ensure food security, optimize water and nutrient management, restore rangelands to boost forage quality, promote climate-smart livestock management and diversify pastoralists livelihoods to build long-term resilience.
Urban resilience
By the year 2050, cities are projected to be homes to two-thirds of the world’s population, making urban areas a hotspot for climate change risks and impacts. Currently, 70% of urban areas are affected by, or are at risk of, climate change effects such as rising temperatures and altered rainfall patterns. Informal settlements are particularly vulnerable as they are often located in hazard-prone areas, such as steep slopes, coastal and river floodplains.
Building urban resilience requires addressing key challenges to protect infrastructure, social systems, and governance. For this call we are seeking solutions that tackle critical urban challenges such managing urban flooding to prevent damage and displacement, ensuring buildings and infrastructure can withstand extreme temperatures and heavy rains, providing reliable energy and water systems during disruptions, and closing gaps in early warning systems to improve safety and preparedness.
Water security
Climate change poses an escalating threat to water security for both current and future generations. Today, 1.81 billion people face significant flood risk, 2.3 billion lack access to safely water, and 3.5 billion lack sanitation. These challenges are intensified by the compounding effects of climate change and rapid population growth. By 2050, up to 3.2 billion people will live in areas with severe water scarcity, exacerbating disease spread, food insecurity, conflict, and migration. These risks disproportionately affect the poor, including women and youth. Water solutions are climate solutions and strengthening water systems is essential for adaptation.
We are looking to partner with innovations that build the resilience of water systems in the face of climate shocks, such as droughts and stress events, like groundwater depletion and contamination. We are seeking solutions that address the challenges of ensuring equitable access to water for vulnerable communities, maintaining water availability in arid regions, and protecting water resources from depletion or contamination from flooding.
Anticipatory or Early action for climate shocks
Early warning systems (EWS) are urgently needed as climate change is driving more frequent and intense extreme weather events. Proven to be a cost-effective disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation measure, EWS save lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the face of climate-related hazards. Studies show that such systems can provide up to a tenfold return on investments by preventing losses during extreme weather events.
We are seeking innovative approaches to protect vulnerable people before climate shocks occur. Solutions should address key challenges such as improving accuracy and timeliness of forecast; expanding access to underserved areas; financial stability after climate shocks; linking early warning systems with anticipatory action plans such as evacuation protocols; EWS that takes account of local contexts and vulnerable groups.
Social protection
Social protection plays a critical role in climate adaptation, particularly for vulnerable populations. Studies indicate that by 2050, climate change could force over 720 million people into extreme poverty and displace up to 140 million as climate refugees. Well-designed social protection programmes can reduce the poverty gap by up to 50% and increase resilience to climate shocks by up to 25%.
This call seeks solutions addressing key challenges at the intersection of social protection and climate change. We invite solutions that strengthen social safety nets and protect low-income households from climate-related losses; improve the responsiveness of social protection systems to climate risks; support livelihood diversifications by providing skills training or transitioning to more climate-resilient livelihoods; help communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of climate events before they occur; address underlying structural vulnerabilities and enhance social inclusion to reduce climate risk for marginalised groups.
Gender Equality
Women and marginalised populations are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to existing gender inequities, discrimination, and social, economic, and political barriers. Women make up to 80% of those displaced by climate change and are 14 times more likely to die during a climate-related disaster. At the same time women play key roles in agriculture, water management, household energy which are sectors directly affected by climate change. Despite their vulnerability and vital roles, women are underrepresented in climate change decision-making at all levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasises that addressing gender disparities enhances the effectiveness of adaptation actions leading to more long-term impacts.
This call seeks solutions that advance gender-responsive innovations that address specific needs and vulnerabilities faced by women and marginalised groups and exacerbated by climate shocks. We invite solutions that increase women’s agency in climate change adaptation interventions; support women’s economic empowerment in climate-resilient sectors; tackle social biases and gender-based discrimination; remove gender gaps in access to financial resources and services; address the climate-related burdens on women such as water collection and food provision, through context-specific technologies; improve women’s land rights and tenure security to incentivize long-term investment in climate-smart practices among others.