Insight Note Vol 5: How Research Drives Climate, Peace and Humanitarian Outcomes

CGIAR’s Climate Security team developed a methodology for documenting research outcomes through story formats, serving as a strategic tool for reflection and learning. The team achieved 12 outcomes in 2023-2024, from informing Kenya’s National Climate Change Action Plan to enabling UNHCR’s call to protect 90 million climate-vulnerable people.

Key findings reveal different perspectives on outcome enablers: partners prioritized evidence, data, and research expertise, while researchers identified co-designing and co-implementing research as most crucial. This suggests that collaborative approaches help partners recognize the value of scientific evidence. Demand-driven research produces better outcomes, though they may take years to materialize.

Major challenges include insufficient time for relationship building, trade-offs between breadth and depth of engagement, and funding constraints. The outcome story process helps link research outputs to outcomes, making trajectories clearer for planning and prioritization while building the team’s reputation as a credible climate security organization.

Gadeberg, M.; Pacillo, G.; Läderach, P.R.D..