Deadline: 12-Jan-23
The Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (Modern Slavery PEC) has issued a funding call for research on modern slavery and climate change.
The aim of this call is to generate new evidence on how policies on climate change can recognise, address and impact on modern slavery risks or linkages between modern slavery and climate change.
While international aspects, such as laws, policies or supply chains, might be examined, applications to this call must generate recommendations for UK based policymakers and decision- makers, such as businesses.
Objectives
- Develop evidence-based recommendations for policymakers and other decision-makers (such as businesses) about how policies on climate change can recognise, address and impact on modern slavery risks or linkages between modern slavery and climate change. Projects must:
- Align to the Modern Slavery PEC’s guiding principles on research, addressing effectiveness, equity and involvement of people with lived experience of modern slavery.
- Use innovative methods, including people with lived experience of modern slavery within the design and outputs of their work.
- Generate evidence of what works or could work, relevant for a business or policy audience
- Generate evidence to influence the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) policies and strategies of businesses and investors.
- ESG is a set of standards across three key factors which measure a company’s impact on society, the environment and how transparent and accountable it is across these areas. These standards are often used by socially responsible investors to measure the sustainability and ethical impact of an investment in a business or company. They are a subset of non-financial performance indicators which examine how businesses operate in relation to the natural environment (e.g. waste and pollution, carbon footprint); how the business treats people (e.g. human rights and labour standards); and how the company itself is governed (e.g. board diversity, and corruption and bribery).
- Projects aiming to address this objective must work with one or a group of businesses or investors to co-develop and pilot a framework to track ESG policies and strategies to better connect environmental issues and impacts along with modern slavery risks, and how to address this combination of factors effectively. This should take account of existing obligations on large UK businesses under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
- Projects could include the generation (or testing, modifying existing) of standards, metrics, and/or performance indicators to enhance understanding and reporting on ESG strategies, which can more effectively connect environmental issues and impacts with modern slavery risks and offer recommendations on how to address these.
- Projects may choose to adopt a sector-specific approach. In this case they should explain how the selection of sector/s was made, and include in the proposal a justification for this with reference to previous research and in terms of potential for the research to make a contribution.
- Generate novel evidence on how modern slavery can be integrated into UK Government and devolved administration climate change policies (‘mainstreaming’).
- Projects should consider policies such as net-zero, overseas aid funding for climate change programmes or policies around public procurement of goods and services in new industries and innovations that shape efforts to address climate change (e.g. renewable energy). Projects should consider how such climate change policies can reduce and respond to modern slavery risks. They would like to see applications covering at least one of the following:
- A review of the effectiveness of mainstreaming other challenges (such as violence against women) into UK climate change policy and analysis of the implications for mainstreaming modern slavery
- Comparative research on how other countries have mainstreamed modern slavery into climate change policies and analysis of the implications for UK policy
- A rigorous mapping of the potential (inadvertent) modern slavery harms that climate change policies might give rise to or need to respond to, drawing out clear recommendations for UK climate change and modern slavery policies
- Empirical evidence on how communities at risk of or affected by modern slavery can most effectively inform UK climate change policies and programmes
Funding Information
The Modern Slavery PEC has allocated a maximum budget of £100,000 at 100% full economic cost (FEC) for this project.
Eligibility Criteria
- They expect to fund three projects for this work. Projects may be led by either a UK higher education institution, an approved research organisation eligible to receive UKRI funding or a charity registered in the UK. Project teams must include at least one academic or research organisation and one UK based third sector organisation.
- Charities registered in the UK may apply for up to 50% of the project’s budget, they will be funded at 100% FEC (for every £1 spent, they receive £1 of funding, so the Modern Slavery PEC covers 100% of the full economic cost of the project)
- International organisations are eligible to apply as partners to this call, they can receive a maximum budget of 30% and will also receive their funding at 100% FEC
- The combined UK registered charity and international costs can account for a maximum of 50% of the total budget of the project
For more information, visit Modern Slavery and Human Rights.
