NERC/DfID/ESRC Building resilience to natural disasters using financial instruments (deadline: 26th September 2017)

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for International Development (DfID), and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) invite proposals to address the topic building resilience to natural disasters using financial instruments. Funding is available to apply environmental and social science research to inform the design, development, refinement and validation of financing instruments to help developing countries respond and recover from extreme weather and natural disasters.

The overarching goal of these projects is to have impact on the developing world. To achieve this, projects must work with practitioner project partners who have a role in the design, development and application of innovative financing mechanisms for developing countries (eg non-governmental organisations, policymakers, disaster risk management actors, insurance companies).

NERC funding for this call will form part of the UK's official development assistance (ODA) commitment, and proposals should demonstrate their primary purpose is to promote the economic development and welfare of countries on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development's Development Assistance Committee list of ODA recipients.

The programme will support both:

  • feasibility studies of up to £100,000 (at 100% full economic cost) and up to six months in duration
  • longer projects of up to £350,000 (at 100% full economic cost) and up to 24 months in duration.

Successful projects are expected to start no later than 1 January 2018.

In order to bring together academics and potential project partners, a one-day networking event will be held at the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel in London on 28 July 2017. For further information please see the networking event page. Please note that attendance at this networking event is not a pre-requisite for the submission of proposals to this call.

Please find further information on this call and details of how to submit a proposal here.