Scaling innovation could be key to the climate crisis

We continue to see at events such as COP and the World Economic Forum (WEF), that world leaders can’t agree on anything more than tentative progress on reducing emissions to keep global warming below 1.5C. Calls for global leaders  to step up quickly and commit never seem to translate into action that stands a chance of curbing the climate crisis.

Recently at the WEF, discussions focused on the “…need for regeneration…rethinking and reinventing everything from business models to supply chains…[which] creates a positive impact, instead of merely avoiding a negative impact”. This demonstrates that global leaders are beginning to consolidate thinking around how to act fast and effectively to bring about change. Governments need to accelerate adaptation through measures such as food and agricultural resilience in the face of drought and flooding; adopting nature-based solutions as part of climate-resilient infrastructure; making health services climate-proof; and ensuring adequate support to the most vulnerable. 

So, what can we do to cut through the diplomatic discourse and accelerate action? One proven strategy to address blockers is scaling innovation through competitions. Open-innovation challenges uncover and enable ideas and technologies to bring meaningful and sustainable change.

How to unlock funding ?

The scale to which measures need to be applied is gargantuan and requires funding to match. We know that whilst bilateral financial commitments have been pledged, actual funding is yet to fully materialise – only 0.2% of the total commitment is currently available. Creating meaningful change at the necessary pace will require more funding to improve the quality of innovative solutions and enable them to grow, scale, and replicate at regional or global levels. 

We need pathways to support innovation and bring about authentic and sustainable change to the climate crisis. The main question is, how can working at scale in these areas be possible without this funding being available now? Last year, a report commissioned by the G20 on how to reform institutions and raise the funds required to tackle climate change and fight poverty recommended the creation of a ‘Global Challenges Funding Mechanism’ at the World Bank.

Challenge prizes could offer a solution. They are a unique approach to funding innovation, offering a series of incentives, with a final prize given to whoever can first or most effectively meet a defined goal. 

Driving innovation using challenge prizes

Using challenge prizes, we can accelerate progress and innovation, increase competitiveness in the market, and build technical quality – stimulating change at scale. This ultimately produces a myriad of solutions that can work across geographies, sectors, and consumer groups. It also de-risks the landscape for funders, presenting a way to ‘hedge bets’ and open up the funding landscape to speed up progress. This is not about finding a single silver bullet but rather a range of viable solutions.

At Challenge Works, we have designed and delivered challenges that explicitly address diverse solutions to climate change issues at scale. 

• The Afri-Plastics Challenge was funded by the Government of Canada, part of the $100 million Marine Litter Mitigation Fund announced at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in June 2018. Via the challenge’s scaling window, we worked with innovators across Sub-Saharan Africa to scale the collection and/or processing of plastic waste, with 67% of innovators reaching the scaling target set for them and overall achieving a significant increase in scale. 
• Through the Climate Smart Cities Challenge with the support of the UN and the Swedish Government, we worked with the cities of Bogotá, Bristol, Curitiba, and Makindye Ssabagabo, innovators to demonstrate and scale cutting-edge solutions to reduce GHG emissions. 
• In partnership with the UK’s National Physical Laboratory’s Centre for Carbon Measurement, the Dynamic Demand Challenge Prize stimulated the development of new products, technologies, and services to use data to achieve reduced carbon emissions by shifting energy demand to off-peak times or through excess renewable generation.

Looking ahead to this year, we are seeking partners on several new challenges that would directly address the shortfall in action on climate change:  

• The Unleashing Energy Prize would tackle the barriers of a lack of grid capacity and the inflexibility of renewable sources to help accelerate the transition to net zero. 
• The Smart Nature-Based Solutions Challenge would stimulate data-driven innovation, empowering smallholder farmers and other small landowners to participate directly in carbon offset markets, or alternative routes to financial viability and sustainability. 
• The Cultivating the Drylands Challenge would broker inclusive and collaborative partnerships between innovators, farmers, and the wider agricultural food supply chain to increase food production whilst building climate resilience. 
• Finally, to upskill and empower the next generation of city and community leaders, the Rapidly Growing Cities Challenge will accelerate data-driven land use planning and inclusive decision-making in some of the world’s fastest-growing cities. 

Challenge prizes are an ideal mechanism to enable change at the scale and speed necessary to address the climate crisis in the next decade – not the next century. 

Interested in partnering on one of the challenges mentioned? Please reach out to me at [email protected] to talk to us about any of our challenge prize ideas.