The Climate Resilience Challenge is a competition for innovative, interdisciplinary, and solution-oriented ideas to build and enhance resilience in the country. This year, the Climate Resilience Challenge will leverage an internally-led project: the OML Center’s Upturn Tool.
This decision-support tool, developed as part of Project Upturn, contains an inventory of climate adaptation solutions and provides an initial evaluation of their effectiveness in terms of economic, technical, environmental, and social feasibility, based on peer-reviewed literature and case studies conducted by various stakeholders. By assessing local climate change risks and prioritizing solutions, the Upturn Tool equips individuals and communities to fortify their adaptive capacity and resilience against the long-term effects of climate change.
To continually enrich the inventory with additional information and unlock further potential for adaptation, the Climate Resilience Challenge focuses on this year’s call for communities to contribute to this knowledge generation. This comprehensive approach aligns with the Center’s mission to enable communities to make informed decisions, harness evidence-based insights, and become active contributors to climate adaptation, fostering regenerative practices in the face of a changing climate landscape.
The Climate Resilience Challenge 2024 is looking for proposals that will model, demonstrate, or apply any climate change solution that can be found in the Project Upturn inventory. The goal is to encourage communities to participate in the generation of evidence-based climate change knowledge that promotes climate change adaptation.
Priority Areas
Grantees are expected to help generate supporting evidence and/or new information on the effectiveness of solutions provided in the Upturn Tool inventory. The knowledge generated should be able to contribute to different areas of effectiveness or feasibility, and how it contributes to increasing climate resilience:
- Effectiveness of the Solution:
- Technical feasibility: The grantee should generate relevant information on the following but not limited to: the level of information necessary for adoption, relevant skills/training necessary to implement the solution, and/or the solution’s potential replicability
- Economic feasibility: The grantee should generate relevant information on the following but not limited to: the benefits and costs the implementation entails, and/or the potential gains for various groups in applying the solution (e.g. increased income, diversified livelihoods, etc.).
- Social feasibility: The grantee should generate relevant information on the following but not limited to: cultural implications in implementing the solutions (if any), the level of social acceptability in the community or wider locality, and/or other dimensions that may provide implications in the adoption of the solution (institutional, political, etc.).
- Environmental Impact: The grantee should generate relevant information on the following but not limited to: potential to generate positive environmental benefit, and/or if there are potential negative implications of implementing the solution to the environment.
- Contribution to Resilience:
The model implementation and activity design must define concrete measures of resilience in the mid- to long-run based on the following indicators:
- Increased adaptive capacity (skills, resources, infrastructure)
- Increased adaptive action (effectiveness, feasibility, flexibility)
- Contribution to Sustainable Development (food security, water sufficiency, environmental stability, human security, sustainable energy, knowledge and capacity development)
Prizes
The Top 3 proposals will be awarded a seed grant of PHP 300,000 each to implement the solution in their identified community. From the Top 3, the best implementer will further receive a PHP 200,000 prize. Other finalists will receive PHP 50,000 each.
Public Presentation
The top three winners of the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024 will present their solutions in a public event to be organized by the OML Center. These presentations aim to provide a platform to share their experiences in the implementation of Upturn Solutions, and encourage more adaptation solutions to be widely adopted at local level.
Interested applicants may SUBMIT A SHORT-FORM PROPOSAL HERE.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can join?
Competition open to local collaborators such as, but not limited to, local state universities and colleges (HEIs), civil society organizations (CSOs), and local government units (LGUs), or a consortium of the above.
Teams can have a maximum of 6 official members including the Team Leader.
Do all team members have to come from the same HEI, CSO, or LGU?
A team can be composed of members from different organizations.
What are the requirements/supporting documents needed?
Participants (including all team members) must be legal residents of the Philippines and must be officially recognized by their HEI. They must submit supporting documents such as official government and school IDs/certification.
What should the proposal contain? Is there a required format?
The short-form proposal should contain the following:
- Team Name
- Upturn Solution to be Implemented
- General Information
- Project Background and Rationale
- Project Goals and Objectives
- Measurement of Solution Effectiveness
- Safeguards
- Sustainability Plan
- Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
- Reference List
The template is similarly included in the registration form.
Is there a limit to the number of entries?
Multiple submissions from each team will be accepted, but each proposed Upturn Solution should not be duplicated by a team.
How will solutions be evaluated?
All submissions will be evaluated based on the project design’s capacity to concretely demonstrate the effectiveness of the Upturn Solution, as well as its overall contribution to climate resilience by addressing an existing gap in the community. Proposals should be able to clearly establish significance, evidence of capability, and the approach and methodology to generate evidence on the effectiveness of the solution.
When is the deadline for submissions?
Deadline of submissions is on August 19, 2024, 23:59 PST.
Can we change our Team Leader at any point during the Challenge period?
No. Once team composition is submitted, changes, especially on the assignment of the Team Leader, will not be allowed.
What happens next after the submission of the eligibility requirements and solution?
Submissions of proposals will go through the following competitive process:
- First screening – Administrative screening: review of documentary requirements and proposal eligibility
- Second screening: All eligible submissions will undergo an evaluation by a panel of OMLC experts and representatives based on the aforementioned criteria
- Final Evaluation: An external panel of experts will review the proposals as a final assessment.
- Awarding of Grants:
- The Top 3 participants shall receive the PHP 300,000 seed grant each
- Other finalists shall receive a participation incentive of PHP 50,000.00
- Pre-implementation training: The Top 3 grantees will need to undergo a workshop on risk-based climate adaptation planning and a mentoring session with the sector expert to advise on the demonstration design (e.g. agriculture, coastal, etc.)
- Revision Period: Participants will be given a brief period to improve their short-form solutions based on the feedback received during the training with experts, to be developed to a more comprehensive proposed implementation plan.
- Implementation and monitoring: The Top 3 participants will need to provide a monthly project status report during a six-month period until 2025.
- Final Awarding: The best implementer will receive a PHP 200,000 prize.
Terms and Conditions
Ownership of Entries and Intellectual Property Rights. All intellectual property rights, title, and interest in and to entries/solutions to climate risks and vulnerabilities, supporting documents and related materials prepared jointly in the course of, or in relation to, the Climate Resilience Challenge shall be owned jointly by the respective Applicant and the OML Center. However, either party may not use the entry or any materials used in the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024 for profit-generating activities, except upon prior written consent from the other Party.
Either party agrees to grant to the other party the non-exclusive right to use the logos, trademarks, characters, designs, format, style, showcase symbols, slogans and other marks, whether registered or unregistered, owned by or associated with such other party (including any name, trademark, or logo that may be subsequently adopted by OML Center for the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024), for publicity and promotion purposes of the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024. However, such use must have prior notification and consent of the party owning such intellectual property right.
Except as authorized herein, neither party shall cause or attempt to create, assert, register, or use the name, other trademarks, or service marks associated with the other party, its parent company, affiliated companies and subsidiaries, whether now or at any time in the future, whether by itself or as part of any other trademark, trade name, domain name, or other material without the prior written consent of the other party.
Other discoveries and products derived from participation in the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024 shall be owned by the initiating Party, provided that the other Party is duly informed in writing of such discovery or product. Parties may negotiate sharing of rights.
The Parties, as joint owners of the intellectual property rights set out in the preceding sub-clauses, shall have the right to use and report the data without the need of consent of the other Party, provided that the same shall be used for research, and other non-commercial public service purposes. Any other use shall require the prior approval of the other Party.
Any intellectual property right existing at the time of the submission shall remain with its respective owner.
Both Parties recognize that, to maximize positive impact and benefit to the community, any knowledge/information/data developed through the Climate Resilience Challenge 2024 shall be published at the OML Center website and other public platforms for non-commercial public use and public purpose. Each Party shall furnish the other Party with copies of all published or unpublished reports and articles, as well as aired materials in relation to the Climate Resilience Challenge, including any entry/solution submitted thereto. Both Parties agree to credit the other Party in any future publications, collaterals or public relations materials relating to the entry/solution and the Climate Resilience Challenge.
All major reports or articles for publication, or communication or media products for public airing, posting or dissemination, based on the Program output or results shall be made jointly in the name of the respective Applicant and the OML Center, together with the name/s of the proponents involved.