Dahdaleh Researchers Receive $5.9M From New Frontiers Research Fund to Support Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Efforts

On June 3, 2024, the New Frontiers Research Fund (NFRF) announced $92 million funding to support 165 new and groundbreaking Canadian-led initiatives: the 2023 International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation which funds 32 projects from 45 countries and the 2023 NFRF Exploration stream which funds 133 interdisciplinary, high-risk, high-reward projects. These funds advance design and implementation of co-produced adaptation and mitigation strategies for physically and socioeconomically vulnerable groups.

The Dahdaleh Institute is pleased to extend our sincere congratulations to Dahdaleh faculty fellows Michaela Hynie, Sapna Sharma, and Idil Boran for their successfully awarded projects which received a combined total of $5.9M.

BioCAM4 - Biodiversity Integration in Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Actions: Unlocking Transformative Outcomes for Planet, People, and Human Health

Nominated Principal Investigator: Idil Boran

Current national commitments under the Paris Agreement and Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework have not been able to prevent the accelerating decline of biodiversity and the intensification of climate change. The BioCAM4 consortium project aims to develop methodologies for mapping Nature-based Climate Action (NBCA) trends worldwide and assessing local opportunities and challenges by studying two major biodiversity hotspots in East Africa and Central America. These areas are also where vulnerable groups and communities reside and feel the effects of climate impacts hardest, despite being least responsible for it. The BioCAM4 takes an interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral approach to achieve three main goals.

First, Boran and her research team will create a comprehensive global mapping and analysis of NBCAs. It will be an open-access database to offer insights on global NBCA distribution, patterns, and performance. By understanding the global trends, it will inform global climate change and biodiversity processes. Second, they will look at context-specific and locally relevant exploration of local dynamics of NBCAs in East Africa's Virunga and Lake Victoria regions and Central America's Trifinio and Brunca regions.

This project is co-funded by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and includes Dahdaleh faculty fellows Dawn Bazely, Tarra Penney, Felipe Montoya, and Dahdaleh Visiting Fellow Srini Srinivasa.

Climate Change Adaptation, Dispossession and Displacement (ADD): Co-constructing Solutions with Coastal Vulnerable Groups in Africa and Asia

Nominated Principal Investigator: Michaela Hynie

This project is a partnership with research institutes, universities, and community organizations across six different countries: Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Norway, the Philippines and UK. Hynie and her team will be working closely with coastal communities in Bangladesh, Ghana, and Philippines that are experiencing unintended negative consequences resulting from climate change adaptation (CCA), with a focus on gendered processes of displacement and livelihood dispossession. Coastal fishing communities are particularly affected as they depend on access to waters and adjacent land, which conflicts with CCA reforestation programs, potentially dispossessing the most vulnerable of their livelihoods, and putting them at risk of displacement. By collaborating on the development of an intersectional approach to CCA, they will build interventions that account for the broader social, political, temporal, and ecological context of maladaptation while acknowledging the concerns and motives of local communities. Moreover, they will be co-developing low-tech tools and platforms for coastal communities to share and document their knowledge, strategies, innovations, and concerns with one another, to inform future programming and to support a truly collaborative, contextualized, and equitable framework for adaptation.

This project will be housed at York's Centre for Refugee Studies and includes the incoming director and Dahdaleh faculty fellow Yvonne Su.

Climate Changed Transportation: Holistic and Indigenous Informed Responses to Transportation Infrastructure, Food Security, and Community Well-being in the Arctic

Nominated Principal Investigator: Sapna Sharma

This research project will analyze the impacts of climate change and the loss of the cryosphere (i.e., sea ice, freshwater ice, snow, permafrost). Many of the most vulnerable Indigenous Peoples in northern Canada and Alaska who rely on traditional food sources are impacted by the changes in the cryosphere and shifting migration patterns. Furthermore, they are prone to fatalities caused by dangerous ice roads and increasingly hazardous cryospheric conditions, thereby risking loss of food security, culture, and mental health. This project has two main goals: the first is to map and forecast safe cryospheric conditions across the Arctic that model real-time ice thickness and quality forecasts. The second goal is to explore observational and modelling tools to enhance the capacity for Indigenous peoples to steward, co-create knowledge, and facilitate exchange. Looking at the intrinsic relationship between changing snow and ice conditions and the impact on food boundaries, the team will be working with local Inuit and Sámi communities to achieve their goals. Through their research, Sharma and her team, including Dahdaleh executive fellow Usman Khan, hope to advance the development of adaptation measures and technological solutions to decrease the frequency of drownings and accidents caused by hazardous cryospheric conditions. They will promote enhanced mobility, food security, in addition to physical and mental health in Arctic Indigenous communities.

Congratulations to all the recipients!

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