Climate change related risks, if not addressed appropriately can have negative impacts on individuals and households, especially among the poorest and the most marginalized groups of people. Through cash awards, the Adaptation at Scale Prize Project (A@SPP) aimed to identify and reward new and innovative ways to scale up and expand (scale out) the reach of such community driven climate change adaptation initiatives. The A@SPP encourages eligible organizations to develop new and innovative ways to scale-up and scale out community driven climate change adaptation initiatives. It accomplished its objective by offering cash prizes worth GBP 500,000 to 10 different organizations that successfully demonstrated their innovative and news approaches and solutions that were internationally judged to be successful.

THE ADAPTATION AT SCALE PRIZE: MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS:

The Adaptation at Scale Prize (A@S) sought to promote innovative approaches to scaling up and out climate change adaptation initiatives by climate change adaptation related project implementing organisations operating in Nepal

The Prize is one of a number of innovation prizes under Ideas to Impact (I2I), a DFID-funded programme established to test the value of using innovation prizes to help achieve international development outcomes, generally to encourage individual, community and non-governmental organisations to act differently over months or years. An innovation prize offers a reward to whoever can first or most effectively solve or meet a predefined challenge. Two key types of innovation prize include recognition and inducement prizes. Unlike recognition prizes, which reward past achievement, inducement prizes, such as those run I2I, define award criteria in advance to spur innovation towards a predefined goal. Inducement award in the case of the A@S initiative was itself divided into two: Inducement or Incentive (Protsahan) prize and Performance or Implementation (Karyawayan) Prize

A@S ran as a two-stage prize over three years, from 2016 and 2019.
Stage 1 (Inducement or Protsahan Puraskar) was a ‘hybrid’ type of prize aimed at recognition and identification of potential solver organization to apply for the main prize. It aimed to recognise best existing adaptation practice in climate change adaptation in Nepal and encourage applicant s to develop ideas for how their existing practice could be scaled up or out beyond their current capabilities and geographic scope. Applicants were required to think through the practicalities or implement abilities of the approaches/methods of scaling up and out proposed, and present this through a project plan.

Stage 2 (Karyanwayan Puraskar) was the main ‘innovation’ prize aimed at inducing implementation of the scaling up and out plans produced in Stage 1. The Prize was to be awarded to participants who could successfully demonstrate that they had met the challenge of scaling their adaptation initiatives and achieved meaningful impact at scale at a community or government level.
An additional recognition prize (Pahichan (Identification) Puraskar) was originally envisioned for A@S, but changed in favour of awarding a set of honorary prizes at the end of Stage 2.

WHAT HAPPENED, WHO BENEFITTED?

38 applications representing all 7 provinces in Nepal
27 of these completed the full duration of the Prize
18 were shortlisted as finalists

10 won cash awards ranging from £12,500-£100,000 per participant
Based on the community size of the applicant’s working areas, approximately 40,000 people are estimated were to have been reached and benefitted by A@S projects

Estimate of over 50% female beneficiaries and other poor and vulnerable groups

Participants were provided technical training on scaling techniques of adaptation approaches covering a total of 1600 individuals.

20 participants reported collaborating with local government to deliver their projects

18 of 25 participants spoken to have planned activities to continue implementing their initiative, including three who had discontinued from the Prize process.

The verification data indicates that five of the projects have new activities directly attributable to the Prize; fourteen applicants were reporting results from existing projects but adding new elements as an additionally to the Prize efforts; and eight were reporting activities from before the A@S reporting period some of whom were also Protsahan prize awardees.