2. September 2024

Request for Proposals for Incorporating Climate Change Strategies into AMR Intervention and Implementation Research Projects

AMR and Climate Change

Climate change (CC) is impacting human health, animal health, food, plant, and environment ecosystems in numerous ways, and many of these lead to the development of AMR. Changes in environmental conditions will lead to an increase in the spread of bacterial, viral, parasitic, fungal, and vector-borne diseases in humans, animals, and plants (IPCC, 2018). While the linkages between the climate crisis, rising temperatures, infection spread and AMR are emerging and complex, the evidence base is still relatively limited (Watts et al., 2018, MacFadden et al., 2018, Magnano et al., 2023). This is particularly true for livestock and aquaculture systems in LMICs where the dual threat of increasing AMR and the climate crisis will have significant impacts (World Health Organization, n.d.).

For both the climate crisis and AMR, the returns on investing in containment and mitigation are expected to far outweigh the costs (Rupasinghe et al., 2024). However, more multidisciplinary research is needed to develop a robust and actionable evidence base on the impacts of the climate crisis on AMR in different scenarios and settings and to investigate how the climate agenda and measures on the ground can become more AMR-specific and sensitive. This is also one of the key messages from the Global Leaders Group on AMR: ‘More financing, political advocacy, and coordinated global action are needed to better understand and respond to the converging threats of AMR and the climate crisis before it is too late.’ (Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, 2021).

Scope of the RFP

ICARS has launched the project “Solutions for integrating AMR into global challenges”, which is funded by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as part of its Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF), through Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and with co-funding from ICARS. The project is a comprehensive organizational initiative designed to address the interlinked global challenges of AMR and climate change within livestock and aquaculture production systems. The key objective is to identify and evaluate AMR mitigation and climate-smart practices and technologies that can be adapted and implemented across diverse LMIC settings.

To achieve this, a scoping review will be conducted to summarize and synthesize evidence from a wide range of documents, including peer-reviewed journal articles, working papers, grey literature, and relevant websites, to provide direction for future research priorities. Additionally, the scoping process will involve online and face-to-face roundtable discussions, and community dialogues and will convene the project’s Action Group of Experts (AGE) to gather insights, discuss findings, and identify knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research collaborations on AMR and climate change.

Purpose of the RFP

The purpose of this RFP is to request proposals from research institutions or consortium on how they intend to carry out the scoping review of knowledge and implementation gaps to collaboratively address AMR and climate change in livestock and aquaculture systems. The scoping review should explore and evaluate existing AMR and climate-smart interventions, practices, technologies, and policies applicable to various livestock and aquaculture production systems. It will focus on understanding how climate-smart measures can effectively mitigate AMR across different LMIC settings, particularly in food-producing terrestrial animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) and coastal and inland aquaculture systems.

Templates and Process

Download all the relevant documents below:

Request for Proposals
Project Proposal Template
Gantt Chart Template
Budget Spreadsheet
Template for the CV of Researchers in the project team

The deadline for submission is October 7th, 2024.

If you have any questions, please email cc_amr@icars-global.org.

We look forward to receiving your proposal!