Academy of Finland to launch call for research into climate change mitigation and adaptation

The Academy of Finland is launching a funding call to support system-level research into climate change mitigation and adaptation. The call will provide funding for system-level research aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change and for increasing the impact of the conducted research. In the General Government Fiscal Plan for 2021–2024, the Finnish Government has allocated a one-off budget authority of EUR 10 million to the Academy for this purpose.

The aim of the funding is to support high-quality research and to increase the societal impact emerging from the research. In addition, the funding will provide an opportunity to pool together research already carried out with other funding and, on the basis of this, to carry out new studies.

Applications are invited from research consortia. Funding will be granted to research in which consortia examine the whole of several societal subsystems (e.g. food, transport, energy, community systems) and interdependencies between the systems in terms of mitigation of and/or adaptation to climate change. The research may also focus comprehensively on a single subsystem. At the same time, the research consortia are expected to systematically promote a broader impact of research in their projects.

Riitta Maijala, Vice President for Research, said: “Climate change is changing the prevailing natural conditions, and the impacts of these changes will radiate both directly and indirectly to various sectors of society and contribute to increasing risks related to human activity and general wellbeing. There are many uncertainties about the nature, intensity, regional variation and interdependence of the ongoing changes, and many different research questions. We also hope that the research projects will provide answers to the systemic changes required in different systems to ensure future wellbeing and sustainable development.”

Funding will be awarded to consortia composed of at least three teams representing at least three different research fields. The consortia must have previous established research cooperation as well as national and/or international cooperation outside the scientific community or other societal impact. The maximum funding comes to EUR 1.7 million per consortium. The call is open between 1 and 30 September 2020. The funding covers the period 2021–2024.

Call details:

• The work of the consortia firmly builds on existing research and creates larger entities or expands research.
• The projects are built around scientifically high-level and ambitious research and impact plans carried out by a top-tier consortium of research teams and possibly other actors engaged in impact work.
• In the review of applications, attention will be paid to both the scientific quality of research and the societal impact of the project.
• The plan describes the attraction, utilisation potential and application areas of the research results of the project outside the scientific community and, for example, the expected short- and/or long-term impact in its different forms.
• The funding also covers costs related to the implementation of the impact plan.
• The projects to be funded are required to have international cooperation and impact.

Applications will be reviewed by panels. The projects selected for funding will be announced in January 2021.