Call for Proposals: Finding Climate Adaptation Research and Innovation Opportunities in Humanitarian WASH Response

In 2023, Elrha launched its ‘Shaping the Future’ strategy. One of the key pillars of this strategy is addressing critical challenges through long-term collective research and innovation efforts. The climate crisis is a critical challenge facing the Humanitarian WASH sector. It is now estimated that 3.6 billion people live in areas highly susceptible to climate change, and that half the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year (IPCC, 2023).

Elrha has been working in humanitarian WASH for over 10 years, building a diverse portfolio of innovative solutions and research that cover water, sanitation and hygiene issues. We have accompanied a number of solutions from inception to being used at scale in humanitarian responses and want to see the impact of our innovation grants continue to grow in the future.

To this end, Elrha is looking to commission a new piece of research to identify research and innovation (R&I) opportunities in the climate adaptation of WASH humanitarian responses. In the next 10-20 years, the challenges faced by those affected by crisis due to climate change are going to be immense and unpredictable, and effective, focused research and innovation will be essential in supporting the humanitarian WASH sector to respond to this challenge.

OBJECTIVES

This project has two objectives:

1. Identifying challenges and public health impacts. Establish what challenges an increase in extreme weather events may bring to WASH humanitarian responses in fours areas in the next 10-20 years, and the possible associated public health risks.
2. Identifying research and innovation opportunities. Evaluate these challenges to identify those that may represent good R&I opportunities (using elements of Elrha’s Exploring Problems for Innovation Opportunities methodology).

The ultimate aim of the project is to identify 8-12 areas where research and innovation could have a significant impact on adapting existing solutions to be more climate resilient in the next 10-20 years. These will be areas where research and innovation can work together to improve responses to climate-related responses (ie. as opposed to areas that would only benefit from research OR innovation). Where feasible, these areas will be built out into possible research and innovation challenge/call designs for Elrha to launch in the coming years.

TIMELINE

The intended start date is February 2024 and the period of implementation of the contract will be until December 2024.