GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards 2023 |€15,000 prize

GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards 2023 |€15,000 prize

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) Local Adaptation Champions Awards 2023 are now accepting applications. The Local Adaptation Champions Awards recognize and honor locally led efforts to address climate change and increase resilience among vulnerable populations.

The 2023 Award Categories are:

• Capacity Building: This category includes innovations and initiatives that support a continuous and iterative process of learning for local communities, governments, and organizations. These innovations and initiatives should be based on established need from the participants and enable inclusive local decision-making that is sustained beyond project cycles, for instance by leaving an institutional legacy; facilitating skills for technical and soft institutional attributes (like collaborative leadership, trust, and network governance); and/or allowing local actors to autonomously increase their capacity and share skills over time. ​Examples include institutionalizing adaptation capacity in local organizations; support for peer-to-peer learning; and support for local experts and champions.
• Business Adaptation Solutions: This category is for small and large businesses that have supported leadership by local communities and governments in adaptation efforts; helped address structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, disabled, displaced, indigenous peoples and marginalized ethnic groups that make them more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change; and/or developed and made easily available adaptation solutions or technologies that address local climate-related vulnerabilities.
• Women in Leadership: This category is for local, national, or global woman leaders who design, champion, and/or lead adaptation and climate resilience efforts in and for local communities. Applications are invited from, or on behalf of, women leaders at the local, national, or global level who have led in the design or implementation of efforts that demonstrably build climate resilience – particularly of the most vulnerable – within communities.
• Innovation in Devolving Finance: This category is for organizations, projects, initiatives or programs using innovative models that provide flexible, long-term, patient and/or predictable funding for adaptation at the local level. The funding should be made available in ways that enable and support local determination of climate challenges, priorities, and solutions.

GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards Prizes

• 20 nominees will benefit from publicity around their nomination for the Awards.
• Four winners will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and be invited to an Award Ceremony at COP28 in Dubai, which will take place from 30 November to 12 December 2023.

Winners will be required to provide a spending proposal of how they intend to use the cash prize and to report on their progress up to one year after the disbursement of the prize. DAI Global will support the monitoring of the activities listed in the spending proposal, through video calls, digital surveys, and requests for photos and video materials.

GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards Eligibility

• Open to any individual, organization, or group of partners worldwide, who have implemented or are in the process of implementing climate change adaptation/resilience interventions.
• The intervention addresses climate change impacts or intentionally builds resilience against the impacts of climate change over time.
• The solution is aimed at the most vulnerable communities, sections of society and individuals experiencing climate impacts.
• Solutions are locally led and demonstrate how to implement at least one of the eight Principles of Locally Led Adaptation in practice.
• The intervention has already been, or is being, implemented and results are demonstrable.
• The entry fits into one of the four categories.

GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards Selection Process

Applications will be ranked according to a points-based system based on five main criteria:

• Effectiveness and community impact.
• Scalability and achieved (or potential for) replication.
• Devolution of decision-making, particularly by the most vulnerable.
• Gender and social inclusion.
• Expected use of Award money.

The first top 20 shortlisted applicants (5 from each category) will be nominated for the Awards and requested to provide additional information to support their entry. Thereafter, a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) will review the shortlisted candidates in their respective categories. The TAG will select two candidates per category, and a High-level Jury will make the final selection of winners.

GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards Application

The application form contains a series of questions and spaces to upload files. Make sure to respond to all questions and provide:

• A written description of the project/initiative or solution in a story format.
• A short video: an interview with participants, a presentation of the intervention, and footage of the intervention.
• Photos, infographics or other visual material to support your story.

Deadline: August 31, 2023

Apply here

For more information, visit GCA Awards.