Keystone Wins UK PACT Green Recovery Challenge Fund!

In a major achievement for Keystone this year, our Climate Change programme has won a grant by the UK PACT (Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions)! Titled the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, Keystone’s Climate Change programme was chosen among a series of projects from across the world to be funded by the UK government to tackle regional problems posed by the climate crisis.

The grant will award Keystone INR five crores, and was officially signed on May 21, 2023. Among several accepted themes stipulated by the grant for applicants to propose work on, our team chose to plan work on improving and replicating our MRV model (measuring, reporting and verification), which is a data driven, analytical and decision-making tool for tracking and making progress towards climate mitigation. This may be done through various approaches, including regeneration of natural habitats, improving practices in land use and so on. This model is built on the perceptions and experiences of Indigenous People and Local Communities.

We have onboarded several national and international partners for this project, including the Tamil Nadu Government, University of Reading (UK), Cornell University (USA), Environmental Defense Fund (USA) and IIT Palakkad. The grant will enable work within mangrove, agricultural and montane forest ecosystems along with local communities whose livelihoods are dependent on these habitats in various parts of Tamil Nadu. Two people have been hired for the project, and have begun with data analysis tasks.

The UK PACT is a 260 million Euro programme that has been funding such projects in 2018. The Green Recovery Challenge Fund has been supporting important climate mitigation work through innovative capacity building for low-carbon solutions across a host of global South countries, including India, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Kenya. Keystone is proud to be the India partner for paving the way forward for climate just transitions!