devinitorg/iati-policy-markers huggingface dataset:
Delhi Air Pollution: Health aNd Effects (DAPHNE) DAPHNE is a consortium of doctors, scientists and technologists drawn from 9 institutions (six in India and three in the UK), to study the effect of air pollution in the city of Delhi on the health of pregnant mothers and their new-born children, and asthmatic adolescents. This group is particularly vulnerable because of their greater intake of air with respect to the body weight, and an underdeveloped immunity system; and, also, the adolescents have greater outdoor exposure when travelling to school and during play times. In addition to estimating the amount of suspended particles and gaseous pollution inhaled by subjects using existing networks of stationary air quality monitors and satellite data, the project introduces novel devices worn on the person to measure exposure to suspended particles and noxious gases, and monitor their breathing rate and breathing effort when the subjects are out and about in their everyday lives. This will estimate the impact of air pollution on their asthma and how different levels of activity could contribute to changes in their condition. Biomarkers in samples of blood and urine taken from the subjects will be used as further evidence to estimate the effects of air pollution on changes in their well-being.  Finally, a panel of stakeholders drawn from India and the UK will advise on how best the research results can be translated into interventions to help mitigate the effects for the benefit of the citizens of Delhi in the first instance, with potential for world-wide application in the future. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
[Viet Nam] Comp-Flood: Compound flooding in coastal Viet Nam Collaborative research with Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand to better understand the likely impacts of hydrometeorological hazards to enable appropriate adaptation and mitigation measures, such as new flood defences or the restoration of natural defences like mangroves to be developed and implemented The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Sources and Emissions of Air Pollutants in Beijing (Manchester) Urban air pollution is a severe problem in China with significant impacts on the economy and the health of the population. This programme will support research on the sources and emissions of urban air pollution in China and the processes underlying and impacting on this, and the impacts on health The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Yr2 Underspend: Regional-scale influences on Delhi air pollution Uncertainties in regional exchanges of air pollution can fundamentally undermine confidence in, and the potential effectiveness of, air pollution policies within cities themselves. This project will address key science capability gaps associated with assessing and reducing pollution impacts in Delhi and the wider National Capital Region. This will be achieved through a collaborative UK-India development of new science tools for predicting air pollution at the surface and measuring air pollution emissions and exposure in India.  These ambitious goals will be achieved through an intensive six month coordinated modelling and experimental effort from NCAS in the UK and IITM and IIT in India. The project will accelerate the creation of advanced new science capability in the UK and India, and enhance further the links between the UK and India for the development of airborne measurement technologies. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Enhancing the benefits of tropical peatland restoration for supporting local communities and ecosystem processes. There is a requirement to feed a rapidly growing human population whilst maintaining ecosystem services and reducing biodiversity losses. Across the world, previously extensive tracts of natural habitats have been degraded by human activities, with detrimental impacts for biodiversity and soils, and for the livelihoods of local communities living in these landscapes. Indonesia's forests are extremely biologically diverse but this hyper-diversity is threatened due to widespread loss of rainforest.   Peat swamp forests contain particularly large stores of carbon and support unique flora and fauna not occurring elsewhere, but have been drained and degraded to make way for agriculture, threatening wildlife and releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere from loss of trees and soil. Much of this recent forest loss is due to conversion to oil palm plantations, which provide important sources of local incomes, although drained peatlands produce many ecosystem disservices (e.g. bare land and soil with low/no agricultural value, poor air quality). Thus there are moves to rehabilitate degraded peatlands with a focus on reducing emissions, but potential co-benefits (and risks) of restoration for biodiversity and consequences for local communities whose livelihoods are dependent on agriculture are not well understood.   The aim of this project is to understand the consequences of draining peatlands for biodiversity and local livelihoods, and to examine different scenarios for prioritising peatlands for restoration, according to biodiversity and emissions considerations and local community benefits and trade-offs.     Restoration of degraded peat forest and re-wetting of drained areas may remove agricultural areas from production thereby reducing small holder farmer incomes and food. Moreover, decisions about sites to restore need to be compatible with systems of local governance, land rights and devolved administrations, and require the identification of alternative livelihood options for communities in restored habitats. The size and degree of connectivity of forest areas is also important for maintaining population networks of species in degraded landscapes, and for promoting the responses of biodiversity to climate change, and so decisions about peatland locations for restoration also need to include consideration of connectivity and adaptation of species to climate change.   The issues we will address in this multi-disciplinary project will have a direct impact on local communities living in Indonesian peatland landscapes but the wider issues of balancing environmental, biodiversity and local community needs in multi-functional landscapes will be of broad generic importance. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
How do the Páramos store water? The role of plants and people. Supporting collaborative research between UK and Colombian academics to improve our understanding of socio-ecological systems in the Colombian regions of Boyacá and Cundinamarca, and their response to environmental change, including climate, land use, and social or political change, and the underpinning role and value of biodiversity in these ecosystems The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
[Malaysia] Integrated Modelling of Landslides due to Hydrometeorological Impacts in Langat Basin, Peninsular Malaysia (iModelLandslides) In recent years, Malaysia has experienced a number of landslide disasters resulting from extreme tropical rainfall. Landslides have occurred in several parts of Malaysia, such as Paya Terubong (Penang), Highland Towers (Kuala Lumpur), Hulu Langat and Pos Dipang (Perak). These landslides cost millions of pounds of property loss and hundreds of lives. On 21 October 2017, 11 workers were killed in a landslide at a construction site on Malaysia's Penang Island.  The October 2002 landslide in Kuala Lumpur which completely destroyed several houses and killed six members of a family and the 2011 Hulu Langat landslide, where 15 children and a caretaker in an orphanage were killed are still in the public's memory. Population increase and subsequent urbanization have demanded the development of new residential and areas and roads in mountainous areas where there is an increased risk of slope failures. Malaysia's population is projected to rise to 41.5 million by 2040, up from 28.6 million in 2010. This proposal will produce a qualitative hazard map delineating areas prone to landslides in the Langat River Basin, Peninsular Malaysia. The hazard map will identify landslide-prone areas, including expected changes in landslide susceptibility as a result of climate change.  Langat River Basin is most urbanized river basin in Malaysia. Important conurbations include towns such as Cheras, Kajang, Bangi and Putrajaya (the administrative capital of Malaysia). The basin has an area of about 2350 km2. The area has been experiencing numerous landslides disasters and has been identified by the Malaysia Public Work Department in its National Slope Master Plan Study as landslide-prone area.  The proposal will involve close collaboration with the Public Works Department and the National Disaster Management Agency in Malaysia and several industrial partners to ensure the adaptation of the proposed map in practice. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
PARAMO - Provisioning of ecosystem services And cultuRAl values in the MOntane tropics Supporting collaborative research between UK and Colombian academics to improve our understanding of socio-ecological systems in the Colombian regions of Boyacá and Cundinamarca, and their response to environmental change, including climate, land use, and social or political change, and the underpinning role and value of biodiversity in these ecosystems The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Air Pollution Impacts on Cardiopulmonary Disease in Beijing: An integrated study of Exposure Science, Toxicogenomics and Environmental Epidemiology This proposal aims to do a comprehensive evaluation of air pollution health impacts on cardiopulmonary health through integration of exposure, epidemiology, and toxicology/toxicogenomic studies.  We will do detailed assessments of people's exposure to air pollution, estimating exposures for long- and short-term epidemiological analyses, and linking these to epidemiological analyses of long term health impacts based on a cohort study, short-term effects (i.e. biomarkers, blood pressure, heart rhythm, peak flow) based on a panel study, and early life effects based on a birth cohort. Additionally, we test the effect of reducing exposure to fine particles, but not gases, by designing an intervention study where volunteers will wear a face mask and examining the exposure-response relationship for the same short-term effects we evaluate in the panel study. The short-term physiological measurements we conduct in the epidemiological studies will provide insight into the mechanisms by which air pollutions affects cardiopulmonary health. To complement the human based studies into mechanisms of action, our project will also conduct extensive in vivo analyses of mechanistic effects, and early life toxicogenomics/metabonomics. Finally, we will provide practical advice to stakeholders based on our study findings, by assessing the potential value of selected strategies for control of exposure to outdoor health protection in a health risk assessment. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Biomes of Brazil - Resilience, Recovery and Diversity Funding to support collaborative research between UK and Brazilian academics to understand how environmental stressors e.g. climate change, deforestation affect the ability of Brazilian ecosystems to deliver societal benefits. Outputs will inform ecosystem management & policy in Brazil The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Upscaling Catchment Processes for Sustainable Water Management in Peninsular India Funding to support coordination and knowledge exchange activities for the SWR programme which aims to understand basin processes affecting water security. This will facilitate the development of sustainable basin-wide water management strategies to ensure India’s water security The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Making soil erosion understandable and governable at the river basin scale for food, water and hydropower sustainability in Latin America Soil is a fundamental resource yet every year some 10 million ha of cropland are lost to soil erosion, mostly due to unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices. Erosion impacts overall sustainability in two ways: (a) reduction in farmland for food production, and (b) discharge of sediments and associated contaminants into water courses polluting water supply, fisheries and aquaculture, and reducing hydropower capacity due to reservoir siltation. Soil erosion and its environmental impacts sit centrally within the Energy-Food-Water-Environment Nexus.  New approaches to land management change are required to reduce socio-economic impacts of soil erosion but in spite of its significance, soil erosion is insufficiently understood in its social dimensions, and is almost non-governed in Latin American DAC countries. Two factors may explain this: (a) erosion is often slow and "invisible", or accepted as the norm, and (b) erosion is highly complex, emerging from interaction of socio-economic and natural processes, with interconnected feedbacks between external and internal drivers. Working in collaboration with researchers from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, the Chile-UK partnership aims to develop a new integrated approach for understanding and governing soil erosion at the river basin scale. Our multidisciplinary team combines innovative scientific measuring methods and advanced Latin American approaches for socio-cultural intervention to provide a new framework within which soil erosion challenges in Latin America can be addressed. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Active tectonics and seismic hazard assessment in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia Provinces, China The provinces of Sha'anxi, Gansu, and Ningxia lie between the southern and western margins of the Ordos block and the northeastern Tibetan plateau. The population of the region is about 70 million, of whom approximately half live within large cities, which have grown rapidly and recently around the nuclei of much smaller cities that are known to have been destroyed by earthquakes in the historical past. The remainder of the population is rural, and live in highly vulnerable buildings. The region has suffered three of the most deadly earthquakes in recorded history; the 1556 Huaxian earthquake was responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 people, and other historical earthquakes are known to have killed over 100,000 people.   This project aims to make a significant improvement in the assessment of seismic hazard in the region, and is particularly timely because the study area covers the most populous part of the Chinese end of  the Silk Road Economic Belt, a planned investment of hundreds of billions of dollars that will transform  communications, transport and trade across Eurasia.  Unlike countries around the Pacific Rim, where earthquakes occur quite frequently, on faults whose  locations are well known, China is exposed to hazards from earthquakes that occur on a widely distributed system of faults, whose locations are poorly known -- or not known at all until an  earthquake occurs. The central aspect of this earthquake hazard is that the intervals between successive earthquakes on the same section of fault are thousands of years. In order to characterize accurately the deformation of a region, therefore, we need to determine the distribution, rate, and role of the active faults across the region over the past 10,000 to 100,000 years.  We shall shall achieve this by combining techniques of field geology, geophysics, satellite-based mapping, and measurements of the deformation of the Earth' surface using GPS and satellite radar. We shall  combine these observations into a coherent picture of the deformation of the region, which will be used to make a new map of seismic hazard of the region that is both more accurate and more detailed than existing maps. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Towards environmental reconciliation in Páramo land in Boyacá: resolving ecosystem trade-offs in post-conflict spaces Land was at the heart of Colombia's long-running armed conflict and is now the pillar on which the success of the peace agreement rests. The war changed the country's social landscapes as much as its natural ones and efforts to address the ecological balance are doomed to fail unless they confront that legacy of conflict. Decades of conflict displaced millions of people from their land and traditional livelihoods, disrupting the social fabric as much as the ecological. The páramo regions in Boyacá illustrate these socio-ecological conflicts. For the last 50 years Boyacá has experienced substantial conflict over resources, manifested through land-grabs, dispossession and displacement of local communities. The situation has deteriorated in the last decade associated with the mining boom that has pushed traditional campesinos into páramo land, further complicated by the fracking concessions currently being awarded in the region. In the wake of the peace agreement Boyacá faces substantial environmental problems, particularly with regards to the páramos, which the local authorities will have to delimit for ecosystem preservation and biodiversity conservation. In doing so, they risk potential new conflicts between contested land usages. Their decision-making needs to balance conservation priorities with concerns for the social and economic future of the displaced traditional campesinos, potato and onion growers, commercial and artesanal miners and small farmers. At the same time, the loss of these livelihoods imposes risks to local and regional food security and rural development programmes.   This project integrates a group of multi-disciplinary scholars from environmental and veterinary sciences, cultural and historical geography, anthropology, economics and design, working with an understanding of the social and ecological nature of these challenges. At the heart of the project is our conviction that peace and reconciliation between the different users of páramo land in order to facilitate and legitimise decision-making is not an add-on to conservation efforts but a sine qua non condition to the effective conservation of páramo land. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
RCUK-SEA Identifying trade-offs of changing land use for aquatic environmental and socio-economic health and facilitating sustainable solutions The economies of Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines), and hence living standards of people living in this region, are intimately coupled to the ocean which is a valuable source of protein via fisheries and income via tourism. Many of these regions also contain valuable natural resources in the shape of forests and peatland which can be harvested for timber, converted to agricultural systems and which store carbon thus regulating the composition of our atmosphere and reducing the rate of global warming. Working out best how to extract resources from terrestrial systems with minimal impact on the coastal systems that they are linked to via rivers is an enormous challenge; logging and land clearance leads to soils entering rivers and coastal waters, changing their transparency, altering fisheries and ultimately losing carbon to the atmosphere. What is needed to understand the best way to manage these competing pressures on the natural environment is information about how it functions and about how the communities which use these systems will respond to likely changes. Putting together the natural scientists who think about soils, forests and rivers with those social scientists who understand what drives people to make the decisions about how they live their lives that they make is a massive challenge. However unless we do this we will only understand one half of the problem. In this project we will therefore both sample coastal waters and rivers in western Borneo to assess their functioning and health and assess the needs of the local communities via questionnaires and interviews. We will put these two halves of the project together via a series of workshops which we believe will better help Malaysia cope with environmental change and manage their natural resources in a sustainable manner. Key elements of the project involve sampling a range of disturbed and Undisturbed rivers and coastal waters, working out the key processes which lead to the loss of soil into the Marine environment, what happens to it and how it affects the ecosystem and looking at how these processes have changed over time and how people's exploitation of coastal espouses have evolved in parallel. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.