Our Fund is Changing…..
October 24, 2022
The Climate Adaptation Fund is shifting its strategy and goals in the coming year to better serve the needs of the climate adaptation field today. Our annual RFP schedule will be affected and will not be posted in February of 2023. We look forward to communicating what has changed and new opportunities in 2023! Read more here.
Request for Proposals: M&E Consultancy Opportunity!
Coach Climate Adaptation Fund applicant and grantees to design a custom M&E plan to enable efficacy evaluation of their projects’ adaptation outcomes and to inform adaptive management decisions during the grant timeline. Please see the TOR here for more details. Proposals due to etully@wcs.org on May 9th, 2022.
New Study Offers Improved Pathways for Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Adaptation Conservation Initiatives
April 2022
Read the press release.
New Success Criteria for Adaptation Released
November 2021
Climate Adaptation Fund staff and researchers from the University of British Colombia developed and trialed 16 criteria to evaluate over 100 adaptation projects. This paper was published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Policy. These criteria can also be applied as a guide during the project design phase as well as in post project assessments.
New Rapid Assessment Framework published
June 2021
Taking lessons learned from a decade of funding over 100 adaptation initiatives in conservation through the WCS Climate Adaptation Fund, authors offer a rapid assessment framework that can be used to facilitate climate-informed conservation and nature-based solutions
The framework is comprised of “5Ws”—referring to the what, when, where, why, and who—of climate-informed action and serves as a guide or tool to make projects more robust to future climate. This paper was published in the Journal of Conservation Science and Practice
Announcing our 2020 grant awards
The Climate Adaptation Fund has announced 10 new grants to nonprofit organizations implementing on-the-ground, science-driven projects that will help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to climate change.
Read the press release here.
WCS publishes first-of-its-kind typology
January 2021
Climate Adaptation Fund staff and researchers from the University of British Columbia introduce a classification called the Resistance-Resilience-Transformation (RRT) Scale. This tool can be used to assess the degree to which conservation projects are applying transformative actions. Intentionally designed resistance and resilience actions are still needed to adapt to climate change but the ever-increasing impacts from climate change highlight the need for more transformative actions designed to transition towards new, more climate-adapted ecological conditions. This paper was published in the Journal of Nature Communications Biology.
Announcing Program Strategy Changes and Funding priority Changes!
December 2020
Image taken from the Climate Adaptation Fund’s Managing Climate Risk for Funders report.
The results of our 10 Year Evaluation, which many of you contributed to, feedback from our Advisory Council of national experts, and the increasing pace and scale of the threats of climate change highlight the need to learn more and learn faster to protect conservation investments and targets. Thus, we are preparing to shift the focus of our funding in 2021, in an effort to increase the pace and scale of both learning and impact of climate adaptation for wildlife, ecosystems and the people that depend on them.
Our RFP will have more details in March 2021. For now we are excited to share that our Fund will prioritize projects that accelerate learning in the field through evidence gathering on innovative implementation projects. And, in a new category of proposals, the Fund will consider the rate and scale at which projects are mainstreaming adaptation approaches that have demonstrated success.
We are especially grateful for the dedication and resourcefulness of our current and former grant partners who have continued to serve wildlife and ecosystems and the people who depend on them through these turbulent times. The climate crisis's call for resources and attention was only increasing when we were struck by the pandemic and a deepening awareness of racial injustice across the country. Thank you for partnering with us to continue working on ways to address climate change on the ground in this new world and for contributing to this retrospective evaluation of our Fund.
A 10 Year Retrospective Evaluation of the WCS Climate Adaptation Fund
May 2020
2020 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Climate Adaptation Fund! WCS and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation are taking this landmark opportunity to learn from the many projects we’ve funded over the years in anticipation of moving into a new funding phase. Our science team, Dr. Lauren Oakes and Dr. Molly Cross will be conducting this study in partnership with researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC). UBC has been brought in to design the study as an independent (3rd party) research lead.
The goal of this study is to assess the outcomes achieved under funding by the Climate Adaptation Fund and to determine the characteristics of innovative adaptation approaches that prove most likely to be successful, or lead to certain challenges. We are also interested in exploring the ways in which the Fund has influenced the broader field of adaptation practice.
Grant partner knowledge and insight gained during and since your CAF project started are critical to our efforts to assess the most effective ways for the Climate Adaptation Fund to serve grant partners and the wildlife adaptation field into the future. To best inform adaptation efforts moving forward, we are eager to collect information from grantees of all funded projects over the years.
The study will be conducted in partnership with researchers at the University of British Columbia.
The Climate Adaptation Fund Hosts launch event for Managing Climate Risks report for funders in St. Paul and hosts a Funders Roundtable in chicago
April 2019 & August 2019
Managing Risks to Conservation Investments Through Climate Adaptation is a report written by funders for funders. The climate is changing, and so should your conservation investment strategies. Learn how to make climate-smart grants and build the capacity of grantees in a changing world. The launch event was held at the 2019 National Adaptation Forum. This report was produced in collaboration with the Climate Resilience Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
The Chicago Funders Roundtable explored the report’s findings and the next steps laid out for conservation funders can take to make their investment portfolios climate-ready. This event was an initial step in discussing how to move forward towards more climate-informed efforts to safeguard nature and wildlife as a community of practice informed by more and stronger funder-scientist partnerships.
Applicants Proposing Joint Mitigation Adaptation (JMA) approaches are invited to apply to the climate adaptation fund
February 2018
WCS’s goal for adding JMA projects as a portion of the Climate Adaptation Fund’s portfolio is to recognize the dual importance of both climate mitigation and adaptation. These goals are interdependent. WCS views JMA projects as an important pathway to help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to climate change while simultaneously providing emissions reductions through methods like carbon sequestration. If we do not adequately reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mitigation), it will become increasingly difficult or even impossible to help species and ecosystems respond to and cope with climate change (adaptation). Conversely, adaptation is an essential tool to assure that natural systems remain healthy and vital into the future, which will protect stored carbon and increase future sequestration. While the Fund’s primary focus remains on implementing strategies that build the adaptive capacity of wildlife and ecosystems to climate uncertainty and change, we also want to incentivize adaptation options that simultaneously offer mitigation benefits.
The Climate Adaptation Fund is awarded the Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources
May 2017
The Climate Adaptation Fund was recognized as a first of its kind program that provides direct support through a grant program to conservation organizations engaging in science-based, intentional, planned climate adaptation of ecosystems and resource management. The grant application structure and criteria help organizations connect the dots between science, planning, and action, with funding dedicated to delivering on-the-ground project implementation. WCS staff work with grantees to ensure the work is completed and that the story is shared with others. The combination of incentivization, actual implementation, and effective storytelling is having a cascading national influence beyond that of any other single grant program or NGO in the US.
About the award
The Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources (Award) was established to recognize exemplary leadership by federal, state, tribal, local, and non-governmental entities to reduce climate-related threats and enhance the resilience of the nation's living natural resources (fish, wildlife and plants) and the communities that depend on them.
The Award recognizes outstanding leadership by organizations and/or individuals to advance the resilience of living natural resources in a changing climate by helping address the goals of the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy.
For their outstanding work in raising awareness and helping the nation's natural resources become more resilient to the impacts of a rapidly changing world, eight organizations and individuals were honored on May 8, 2017 by their peers at the National Adaptation Forum as recipients of the Climate Adaption Leadership Award for Natural Resources.
Recipients were selected from 27 nominations representing activities from individuals and federal, tribal, state, local and non-governmental organizations from around the country.
Urban Adaptation Work Invited
February 2016
Adaptation work can yield important benefits to wildlife and ecosystems in urban settings. We have added an additional priority to support projects focused on wildlife adaptation in and around urban areas (i.e., cities and towns of all sizes) of the United States.The Climate Adaptation Fund recognizes that many communities of color and under-resourced communities are often disproportionately affected by climate change impacts. We therefore encourage applications to factor socio-economic demographics into site selection for adaptation work not just in urban areas, but from all regions across the country. We hope that many of the projects we support in and around urban communities will offer co-benefits for people.
“Integration of local communities into our on the ground activities helping species adapt to climate change is essential for stewardship of natural resources in perpetuity.
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