New paper published by Challenge Works for climate funders

To coincide with London Climate Action Week, Challenge Works (the new name for Nesta Challenges) has published a new paper calling on climate funders to use high-impact challenge prizes to incentivise solutions to the planetary emergency – from tackling droughts and wildfires to democratising energy access and alleviating mounting food insecurity.

The paper, Climate Possible: How Funders Can Accelerate Innovation for a Resilient Future, presents real-world scenarios where prizes can be used to pinpoint problems ripe for action while sharing relevant examples of success from previous initiatives. Opportunities for prizes identified include: enabling smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production in arid locations to providing young climate refugees with access to flexible education, among others. Notably too, drawing on a decade of experience mobilising a diversity of entrepreneurs and innovators to take on big social, economic, and environmental problems, the authors make the case that a critical rethink is needed of how innovation funding is deployed – especially if we are going to deliver on net-zero promises and keep warming well-below 1.5C, in line with the Paris Agreement.

A survey of UK innovators carried out to mark the 10th anniversary of Challenge Works last week shows that 82% of innovators say we need more people from all different sectors working to address the climate crisis, while 76% said they believe the technology solutions to the climate crisis already exist but that they need greater support to scale.

In a direct call to funders, Tris Dyson, managing director of Challenge Works, said: “As industry and advocates gather online and in-person at London Climate Action Week, we want to see climate finance redirected towards a diversity of innovators across a variety of sectors – not just environmental actors or the big companies. Net-zero requires innovation in every part of the global economy. Only then can we stimulate the flow of innovative ideas and unexpected solutions from beyond the usual suspects and bring about real climate action.

“With COP27 just a few short months away, funders – whether public, non-governmental or private – have both the responsibility and the privilege to act. They must embrace new ways of identifying innovation and new financing models to sustain them and scale them for success. Without this shift in mindset and approach, we’re simply continuing to waste talent, time and money in pursuit of siloed and incremental solutions.”

Dyson is available for comment on:

1. The barriers facing socially-minded innovators and entrepreneurs today, from funding access to bias – especially for Britain’s medium-sized businesses who find themselves held back from achieving large-scale success

2. How Western government’s reliance on a 1950s model to catalyse R&D is getting in the way of social innovation

3. How and why challenge prizes supercharge the innovation process

4. The gaps in climate innovation problem-solving to date and how well-designed prizes can incentivise much-needed solutions.

Contact Kasia Murphy [email protected] for additional comment or interview opportunities.

Methodology
Between 18 and 25 May 2022, Opinium surveyed 400 workers with a current or previous (last 10 years) responsibility for innovation in their job role. Data based on samples of under 50 responses have been described as ‘indicative’ only.

Micro businesses are defined as having 1-9 employees; small businesses are defined as having 10-49 employees; medium-sized businesses are defined as having 50-249 employees; large businesses are defined as having more than 250 employees.

376 respondents indicated they currently have a responsibility for innovation (of which 182 have some responsibility as part of a wider group, 194 have a large responsibility for innovation).