TWAS – Women in Climate Action project grants
Knowledge deriving from scientific research often suffers from not being applicable to real-life scenarios, especially in the Global South – slowing down tangible improvements. Greater progress in the livelihoods of individuals are achieved when research is done in cooperation with local populations, and when scientific know-how is effectively shared by those living in the same communities. UN Women reports that globally, one fourth of all economically active women are engaged in agriculture, where they regularly contend with climate consequences such as crop failure and experience an unequal burden of care for collecting increasingly scarce water and fuel.
Launched in 2021, the partnership with TWAS – the World Academy of Sciences focuses on women researchers working in climate action and builds off of an earlier 4-year partnership supporting the UN SDGs, the TWAS North South Collaboration in Sustainability (2015-2019) — which encompassed PhD travel grants, visiting professors, case study competitions and a sustainability symposium at the TWAS General conference. The Climate Women grants aims to empower women to lead concrete projects in climate action that take them outside the lab, deepening their scientific and soft skills such as project management and leadership.
What do we do
Through Climate Women, the Elsevier Foundation supports project grants for women scientists tackling concrete climate challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration.
The program enables women researchers to design and implement locally relevant projects with the potential to address climate change impacts in their communities. By centering women’s scientific leadership, the partnership promotes gender equity in climate research while strengthening pathways from evidence generation to practical application.
How we deliver
he partnership provides multi-year grants to small, collaborative teams of women researchers, encouraging interdisciplinary approaches and strong community engagement. In addition to funding, Climate Women convenes project leads for capacity strengthening and peer exchange.
This combined approach, including financial support, technical exchange, and global visibility, helps ensure that climate research led by women scientists is not only academically rigorous, but also grounded in local realities and positioned to inform policy and practice.
