Our Impact
Established in 2014, GRP unites governments, nonprofits, academia, and private enterprises to address complex climate change challenges affecting communities in the frontlines. Today, collaborating with a vast network of organisations, GRP’s projects have demonstrated unparalleled transformative change. Founding signatory and champion of the Locally-Led Adaptation Principles and guided by cutting-edge research, GRP supports inclusivity and amplifies the voices of local communities in the Global South, helping to create a more resilient and sustainable world.
From a Partnership consisting of fewer than ten organisations, we are now over 80 active organisations, all united in the mission to advance resilience. We have transitioned from a primarily Global North-led organisation to a Secretariat that spans a diverse range of 14 countries. We have established ourselves as a recognised leader in measurement and evidence building for resilience, strengthening capacity, amplifying the voices of local communities, and engaging the private sector. Our efforts to date have supported millions of people, thousands of organisations, hundreds of new investments, policies, and actions, and have elevated the profile of resilience globally.
Significant achievements
We have democratised resilience knowledge generation and strengthened the evidence and measurment community
“GRP has provided a space for Southern researchers to make a contribution to resilience, placing an emphasis on democratising knowledge generation. This has meant providing a platform to Southern practitioners to promote and exchange their on-the-ground knowledge of resilience, consolidating and synthesising this for other stakeholders, and then using GRP as a conduit to advance this knowledge more widely.” – Excerpt from the independent Formative Evaluation, 2022
We have built a pipeline of scalable resilience projects and increased the overall market for resilience solutions
“GRP’s commitment to scaling initiatives through its Challenge Funds is valued within the resilience space, filling an important market gap and putting the Partnership in a different place to other actors in the resilience space. Though initiatives that are both truly resilience-building and scalable are rare, GRP has on a number of occasions supported them where they exist, demonstrated their proof of concept, and then blueprinted and scaled them through external partners such as the World Bank. This focus on identifying and funding scalable initiatives is a unique offer, especially within a context in which the funding ecosystem in international development has a small appetite for risk. GRP thus provides an important missing element within the funding space for resilience through its Challenge Funds, clearly creating a space in which resilience innovation can flourish.” – Excerpt from the independent Formative Evaluation, 2022
We have elevated resilience and adaptation on par with mitigation and influenced other major actors on their resilience and adaptation framing and uptake
“GRP’s increasing emphasis on this convening role was frequently praised, enabling the Partnership to support action on resilience from the top down, as well as from the bottom up. This shift has also raised GRP’s profile, with the Partnership playing an important role as a convener at major global events. GRP’s participation in such events has enabled it to raise the profile of resilience on the international stage, which is especially important within a context in which the development community’s focus is aimed squarely at climate mitigation. Moreover, GRP’s ability to support actors to collaborate after such events take place helps to ensure that momentum towards ambitious and actionable resilience commitments in policy and investment spaces is sustained.” – Excerpt from the independent Formative Evaluation, 2022
Success stories
Our MEL processes and Indicator Guidance
Onward reflections and lessons learnt
As we embark into a new strategy and implementation cycle, we will build on the key lessons learnt:
Growing the market for and increasing the uptake of resilience solutions requires concerted efforts to support innovative products and services, as well as the entrepreneurs behind them.
We will double down on our commitment to mobilise financial flows into resilience solutions through our Innovation Challenges, as well as continuing to cultivate the wider enabling environment for resilience innovation through our work with larger private sector companies, business schools, technology providers, investors, and other key stakeholders. We have learnt that taking a systemic approach to innovation requires intervening at multiple levels. This insight informs our approach to innovation, ensuring that we tackle structural and functional barriers to enable a healthy ecosystem for scaling solutions. We will continue to do this through supporting entrepreneurs to develop their leadership skills, improving business models and product/service propositions, connecting investors and entrepreneurs, developing the business case for resilience investments, while seeking to shape the wider narrative about a growing market for resilience solutions.
Ensuring the uptake of resilience evidence – what works and what doesn’t – requires facilitation and dedicated knowledge brokering.
To support this, we will build on lessons learnt from GRAID, the Resilience Evidence Coalition, and our wider knowledge work. We will double down on creating spaces for inclusive transdisciplinary learning, through facilitating communities of practice and building the connective tissue between them. For learning to be transformative, it needs to be designed and implemented as an active and relational process, rather than a passive ‘transfer of knowledge.’ We will continue to do this through building trusted relationships with our partners, designing and hosting interactive learning processes and events, and ensuring that learning is mobilised back into decision-making.
Successful advocacy and policy influencing requires trusted convenors.
We will build on our track record as a trusted leader in policy convening, collaboration and advocacy, ensuring that insights from our innovation and knowledge work areas inform policy processes. By fostering inclusive dialogues and creating platforms for diverse voices, particularly those from the Global South, GRP has established itself as a reliable and effective intermediary between local communities and global policy frameworks. Through consistent engagement and capacity development, we will continue in our role as a trusted convenor that brings together grassroots organisations, policymakers, private sector leaders, and international agencies to discuss and advance resilience initiatives.
An engaging and proactive approach to partnership building is key to the success of the Secretariat’s programmes and the overall Partnership.
We will continue to focus on ensuring that we build a partnership that is focused on adding value to our partners. To date, our approach of identifying and co-designing activities and programmes amongst partners has mostly been through direct engagements and conversations. As part of our new strategy, we have undertaken a review of our Partnership Policy and consequently we have refreshed our offer and our ask to Partners.
The success of all the above is enabled by organisational learning, robust internal processes, and a positive and thriving work culture.
We have made significant improvements to internal processes and organisational learning. Now spanning two entities in Sweden and South Africa, our policies, routines, procedures, and capacity are in place to ensure the successful implementation of our new strategy. Alongside these, GRP’s work culture promotes a sense of belonging and purpose, where employees are engaged, productive, and committed to the organisation’s success, aiming to not only attract top talent but also encourage continuous improvement and innovation. We will continue to monitor and improve these processes as appropriate to increase the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the Secretariat.