Article

Investor Forum 2024: Locally driven projects with real-world impact

At Climate Week NYC, a group of innovators pitched their projects to prospective funders and partners. These locally-driven solutions, addressing everything from sustainable agriculture to resilient infrastructure, showcased the power of small-scale initiatives to drive global impact.

Written by: Ida Gabrielsson
GRP Areas of work: Innovation Theme: Agriculture, nutrition and food security Cities and urban resilience

At the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), we are dedicated to identifying and supporting on-the-ground innovations through the design and execution of challenge fund competitions. These competitions uncover bold, innovative ideas that, while starting small, have the potential to scale and address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Through these initiatives, GRP has accelerated resilience innovations that have supported 7 million people, with over US$45 million invested across the Global South. Many of these projects have garnered prestigious international recognition, including two UNFCCC Momentum for Change Awards, the UNDRR Sasakawa Award, the Munich Re Risk Award, and a UN Global Climate Action Award for Women for Results.

At Climate Week NYC, the 2024 Investor Forum introduced leading resilience innovations—identified, assessed, and monitored by GRP for their scalability and replication potential—to prospective funders and partners. This event provided an opportunity for these innovators to present their projects to organisations and individuals interested in further funding to scale up these initiatives, increasing their global impact. It also allowed for cross-collaboration and peer-learning to explore replicating successful models, and adapt aspects of these projects to new contexts.

Kenneth Barigye, Managing Director of Mountain Harvest, one of the project leads pitching at the forum says, “I came to the Investor Forum focusing on my pitch to investors and then realised there was much more value beyond investors’ interest in my business. As I listened to pitches by others, I started getting ideas on how to improve my own business and create more opportunities. Some of the speakers were presenting solutions for challenges that I face in my community and those that I never thought I could address. I think the Investor Forum is not just about pitching to investors but also a forum of sharing and improving ideas for resilience building opportunities for people and businesses.”

Kenneth Barigye responding to questions from the dragons.

Sheela Patel, Director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, also shares her reflection on pitching during the forum. She says, “I used to think that elevator pitches were not impactful, and yet when I spoke at the investor forum, I realised that it pushes you to identify the most important and critical things that you want to highlight and to have the guts to say how it’s going to be done and what you are asking for. It could mean a rejection, but it’s better to give your pitch right away rather than to keep sending so many proposals to so many people that may just put it into their electronic bin or real dustbin.”

Sheela Patel responding to questions from the dragons.

Here are the remarkable projects showcased at the Investor Forum:

Since 2010, the Near East Foundation (NEF) has established and supported cooperatives in Sudan, largely made up of women producing non-timber forest products like gum arabic, honey, and desert dates. These products are vital for local communities, offering resilience to climate fluctuations, pests, and extreme weather, providing a fallback during crises. NEF offers finance through community-based credit (CBC) systems, leveraging local networks for microfinance solutions like revolving funds. NEF works with 13 cooperatives, serving ~3,000 members, 75% of whom are women. CBC funds maintain a repayment rate of over 85%. After the recent crises, NEF expanded its support to thousands of producers and processors, building resilient market systems and improving food security. 

Real world change:

  • Enhanced access to finance for 2,509 entrepreneurs, supporting more than 17,000 beneficiaries directly
  • Improved productivity in approximately 8,500 hectares of land 
  • Boosted women’s economic power and decision-making roles in household, community structure, and public settings.

Near East Foundation

Mountain Harvest’s model improves the quality of life for smallholder coffee farmers and supports healthy and thriving natural ecosystems. It emphasises the need to boost productivity and improve profitability at the farm level by focusing on the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices across 1,042 farmers and facilitating youth employment in agriculture. By elevating the quality of coffee into the speciality coffee market, Mountain Harvest disconnects pricing from commodity markets and uses additional margins generated from higher prices to pay farmers up to 30% higher farm gate prices. 

Real world change: 

  • Paid farmers US$2.1M in coffee purchases (2022 to 2024)
  • Provided farmers with US$100,000 in micro loans. This is a revolving fund. 
  • Increased coffee productivity from 0.4kg to 0.65kg of green coffee per tree
  • Trained 1,042 farmers in regenerative agriculture
A portrait of Kusolo Robinah sorting cherries in Bufuma. She is a coffee farmer and employee at the cooperative buying centre.

Jjumba Martin/Mountain Harvest

Project description: Farm to Feed focuses on reducing food loss by off-taking the full harvest from farmers and creating a market for the odd-looking produce – which improves food affordability, boosts farmer incomes and tackles climate change. Farm to Feed has an end-to-end digital platform using bespoke and existing solutions, from farmer onboarding, data collection, internal operations to an e-commerce site. Farm to Feed is pioneering a unique carbon credit scheme, launched by Verra. 

Real world change: 

  • 920,000kg of food saved
  • 1,000 tonnes of CO2 avoided 
  • 41% increase in farmer incomes
  • 150%+ monthly growth since January 2024

Farm to Feed

The CAFAESUP project is a locally-led, carbon financing initiative for smallholder farmers. The project uses support services to scale monitoring and the quantification of emissions and sequestration by using proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. This intervention enhances farmers’ livelihoods through a sustainable income with the sale of carbon credits, thereby bolstering their resilience and financial well-being. The CAFAESUP team draws on their extensive on-the-ground experience, where they have successfully collaborated with over 300,000 farmers in Kenya and Tanzania. FSPN self-funded the initial pilot in Kenya and is now expanding into Tanzania. 

Real world change:

  • Increase the production of nutritious, diverse food 
  • Sequester up to 1,000,000 metric tonnes of carbon 
  • The project aims to cover between up to 400,000 acres
  • Projected revenue: US$9-15 million from carbon credits

Corina Angheloiu

Roof Over Our Heads is a campaign that envisions delivering resilient, low carbon and affordable homes and improving public infrastructure to urban residents, particularly those living and working in informality. ROOH’s learning labs serve as experimental grounds where innovative housing solutions are tested and refined, emphasising a participatory approach involving local communities, especially women, and professionals. ROOH’s vision links itself to the UN High Level Champions Race to Resilience and Race to Zero Campaigns, and expects itself to deliver the Race to Resilience goal of building resilience of 4 billion people across the globe that remain most vulnerable to climate change.

Real world change 

  • Established learning labs across 17 settlements in nine Indian cities
  • Completed the first phase of six labs in Latin America and seven in Asia

Slum Dwellers International

Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) employs a multi-stakeholder approach to enhance climate resilience in small and medium-sized cities by developing and implementing Heat Action Plans (HAPs). MHT provides technical support for Heat Risk Assessments using emerging technologies and community knowledge. MHT also builds the capacity of citizens, especially urban poor women, to engage with government and private sector stakeholders, ensuring that interventions effectively target the most vulnerable populations. Through this approach, MHT empowers communities to influence city planning and promote a pro-poor agenda for climate adaptation and resilience.

Real world change

  • 4 million individuals served 
  • 63,861 women trained
  • US$1.64 million saved by credit cooperatives 
  • US$18 million worth of public resources accessed for poor women

Mahila Housing Trust

Centro Sabiá is a leading voice in Brazil’s semi-arid climate debate, with over 30 years of experience. Its goal is to create scalable climate adaptation and mitigation solutions. Since 2018, and more recently under the UNDP Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator program, Centro Sabiá has implemented a women-led technology, integrating greywater reuse with agroforestry. Each system repurposes 50,000 litres of greywater annually into nutrient-rich fertiliser to irrigate 1,250 m² agroforestry plots. This solution enhances soil quality, strengthens food security, reduces water pollution, restores the Caatinga biome, and captures CO2.

Real world change:

  • +1,000 agroforestry systems deployed
  • +10,000 adaptation technologies implemented
  • Over 30 million litres of greywater filtered yearly, US$210,000 in annual cost savings, and 185 acres of agroforestry irrigated
  • Revolving fund providing 223 microloans and reinvesting 290% of the initial capital

Centro Sabiá

These innovative projects highlight the transformative power of locally-led initiatives in building resilience, promoting sustainability, and delivering tangible impacts for communities and ecosystems worldwide. At GRP, we aim to foster collaboration and support synergies between initiatives and potential donors, enhancing their ability to scale solutions. During the forum, several of the project leads made connections with potential funders and are currently progressing their conversations. 

The Investor Forum Project Portfolio is available here.