NRF Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Collaborative Funding Call

Funding available for projects to accelerate the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Global Research Council (GRC) is a virtual organisation comprised of science, research and engineering funding agencies from around the world. It is dedicated to the promotion and sharing of data and best practices for high-quality collaboration among funding agencies worldwide. Further, the GRC is committed to providing an opportunity for countries large and small to work in concert across national borders. The GRC believes that cooperation and collaboration can enhance the quality of science, avoid unnecessary duplication, provide economies of scale, and address issues that can only be solved by working collectively and collaboratively.

This is a pilot call aiming to accelerate the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), through the implementation of results from ongoing or recently finalised research and innovation projects to advance knowledgebased achievement of the SDGs, from local to regional scale. Projects will be funded through international consortia where researchers together with implementation partners and stakeholders collectively and collaboratively aim to improve research outcomes for impact. The research and outcomes of the projects funded should lead to impact on society and improve the livelihoods of people on the ground.

Proposals for this call should consider the following challenges:

• Human well-being and capabilities
• Sustainable and just economies
• Food systems and nutrition patterns
• Energy decarbonisation with universal access
• Urban and peri-urban development
• Global environmental commons

Each proposal should cover no more than two challenges.

The call seeks to fund collaborative, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural consortia. The consortia are to consider the following in terms of approaches and objectives/outputs:

• Have a challenge approach with clear-cut implementation goals to effect and measure impact
• Use targeted and innovative action aimed at contributing towards the achievement of SDGs that are likely to have societal impact
• Addresses a minimum of one and maximum two of the challenges described above
• Based on results from one or more ongoing or recently finalised research or innovation projects (ongoing for at least two years or finalised in 2017 or later)
• Facilitate international collaborative action that prioritises the practical relevance of research outputs and the ability to share data and deliver innovative implementation approaches geared towards impact
• Advance knowledge-based achievement of the SDGs at local or regional scale in at least one participating country within a consortium

The duration of projects can be between two and four years, but this can vary from funder to funder.