Climate change disproportionately affects people experiencing poverty and threatens to reverse decades of progress in global poverty alleviation. J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), launched in 2020 in partnership with King Philanthropies, funds the evaluation and scaling of policy solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation, aiming to inform the scale-up of effective climate policies that reach at least 25 million people in the next ten years.

"It is a great honor for King Philanthropies to partner with J-PAL in bringing K-CAI to fruition. This initiative is spurring a great deal of impact at the intersection of poverty and climate change, generating evidence to understand how policies and technologies impact people in real-world settings and supporting the scale-up of proven solutions. Early results of K-CAI are promising and exciting. And the best is yet to come!"

J-PAL at COP26

As part of this work, the K-CAI team was on the ground at the United Nations’ 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November speaking at events, hosting meetings with potential partners, and learning from our climate colleagues.

J-PAL co-founder and co-director Abhijit Banerjee spoke at The New York Times Climate Hub’s live-streamed panel discussion, The Great Intervention: Innovation in Food Systems. Here, Abhijit shared the critical importance of real-world evidence for ensuring that agricultural innovations meet the needs of smallholder farmers. He also spoke at the InsuResilience Global Partnership Annual Forum, discussing climate and disaster risk finance and the impacts on people experiencing poverty.

“Lab settings where innovations are developed are very different from the settings in which people operate. When you design for the context and test in the context, these innovations will work better."

Informing Climate Finance

An important goal of COP26 was mobilizing climate finance. In an opinion piece published in June 2021 in The Guardian, Abhijit Banerjee and J-PAL co-founder and co-director Esther Duflo wrote about the importance of trust between high-income and low- and middle-income countries for addressing climate change, and how this relates to Covid vaccines:

“Vaccinating the world will be crucial if countries are going to act together to confront the climate crisis, which will require many of the same things as delivering vaccines: resources, innovation, ingenuity, and a true partnership between rich and developing countries.”

While funding will continue to be key as we address climate change, it cannot guarantee effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies alone. As technological and policy innovations do not always achieve their desired effects in the field, climate financing should be informed by real-world evidence to ensure solutions are effective prior to being scaled.

Partner Snapshot: The Jameel Observatory

Announced at COP26, the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action is an international partnership led by the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute, Save the Children, J-PAL, and Community Jameel. The Observatory mitigates climate shocks resulting in hunger within vulnerable livestock farming communities by connecting technology, data, and evidence with community-driven applications and interventions.

As an evaluation and knowledge partner, J-PAL will connect the Jameel Observatory with teams of researchers to help assess the initiative’s interventions and will share evidence on effective climate change and adaptation programs from existing experimental evaluation literature.

"Community Jameel and J-PAL have a deep partnership that continues to grow, most recently with the launch of the Jameel Observatory in Nairobi, Kenya. With this new project, we are collaborating with J-PAL, alongside a consortium of partners, in using data science to monitor, forecast and give early warnings of outbreaks of hunger, and to act early to save lives and deploy support more effectively. After more than 15 years of cooperation, we are excited to see our partnership expanding into new fields."

Enabling New Research and Scaling Efforts

Evidence for effective and equitable climate action

K-CAI received 45 research and scaling proposals and funded 27 projects across climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, adaptation, and energy access in 2021.

Focus areas of proposals received in 2021

Funded Project Spotlights

Climate change mitigation

Renewable Energy Investments: Microfinance Support for Small Businesses and Micro Enterprises in Pakistan

Several factors may hinder micro, small, and medium enterprises’ adoption of new off-grid renewable energy technologies. In this pilot project, Markus Frölich (University of Mannheim), in partnership with a local microfinance institution, is evaluating the impact of providing technical assistance, loans, and subsidies on the uptake of renewable energy solutions in Pakistan. The aim of the program is to generate income and reduce emissions for small entrepreneurs, particularly women. Learn more »

Paying Smallholder Farmers to Increase Carbon Sequestration by Changing Agricultural Practices: Evidence from Odisha

Agricultural practices have the potential to increase soil capacity to bind and absorb carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this pilot project, Aprajit Mahajan (UC Berkeley) and coauthors Shuo Yu and Sayantan Mitra, in partnership with the CrossLinks Foundation, study the impacts of incentives to smallholder farmers in rural Odisha, India to adopt agricultural practices that improve carbon soil sequestration. The project lays the groundwork for a larger-scale randomized evaluation that will link rural farmers to firms providing carbon credit.

Pollution reduction

Targeting Clean Fuels: Pricing Strategies and the Distribution of Benefits in Periurban Ghana

The Government of Ghana is lagging behind its goal of providing 50 percent of Ghanaian households access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fuel for cooking. To inform the Government of Ghana’s household energy policy for LPG distribution, Kelsey Jack (UC Santa Barbara; Co-Chair, J-PAL’s Environment, Energy, & Climate Change sector and K-CAI), Paulina Oliva (University of Southern California), and coauthors Darby Jack and KP Asante are evaluating the cost-effectiveness of targeted subsidies for LPG, as well as their impact on uptake and exposure to air pollution, by gender and overall, compared to cooking with traditional fuels. Learn more »

Climate change adaptation

The Sooner the Better: An Evaluation of Forecast-Based Action in Somalia

Forecast-based action (FBA) means acting proactively to mitigate the predicted impacts of an identified forecasted shock. One approach to FBA uses meteorological forecasts, price data, and satellite-based livestock production models to project the likelihood of weather-related distress. This, in turn, triggers action, such as cash transfers or livestock feed, if pre-defined thresholds are met. In this evaluation, Jonathan Robinson (UC Santa Cruz), Shilpa Aggarwal (Indian School of Business), and coauthors Alan Spearot and Rolly Kapoor, in partnership with Save the Children and Community Jameel, will evaluate forecast-based action by comparing the impacts of aid sent to households in pastoralist regions of Somalia before and after a drought has begun.

Credit for Climate Change: Promoting Asset-Collateralized Loans for Water Tanks

Climate change is increasing rainfall variability, and asset collateralized loans (ACLs) can help smallholder dairy farmers purchase rainwater harvesting tanks to adapt. In this pilot scale-up project, Michael Kremer (University of Chicago) and coauthors Tomoko Harigaya and Joshua Deutschmann have partnered with a Kenyan dairy cooperative to roll out ACLs to other cooperatives, build administrative capacity, and measure productivity and climate-adaptation outcomes. The study results have the potential to inform the use of water tanks as a climate adaptation solution across Kenya and beyond. Learn more »

Energy access

Using Contests to Encourage Energy Conservation in Vietnam

Vietnam’s energy sector, like that of many low-and-middle income countries, faces high emission rates and low electricity reliability. To reduce air pollution and increase reliability, utilities encourage households to conserve energy. In this study, Teevrat Garg (University of California, San Diego) and coauthors Jorge Lemus, Guillermo Marshall, and Chi Ta are working with Hanoi utility EVN and ICOM to study the impact and cost-effectiveness of using contests between households as a strategy to reduce energy usage.