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Introducing SOLVE: A FABLE-Led Belmont Forum Project for Inclusive Climate Adaptation and Resilience

By FABLE Consortium

Launching a Global Effort for Climate Resilience

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Belmont Forum-funded project, “SOLVE”: System adaptation for OneHealth under climate change for Vulnerable groups and Ecosystems (SOLVE). The SOLVE project kicked off in Istanbul, Turkïye on 9 June 2025. Designed as a three-year project, SOLVE will generate evidence to help decision-makers and food system actors understand the impact of climate extremes on vulnerable groups and take action. Building on the FABLE Consortium network, SOLVE is a highly diverse, transdisciplinary team with complementary experience.

It includes researchers from Centre for International Climate Research (CICERO), France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, (BAU SUGAM), Fundacion Bariloche (FB), Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (Alliance BI-CIAT Ethiopia), Policy Studies Institute (PSI), Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México (IBERO), and Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS), with backgrounds in economics, physics, agronomy, zoology, ecology, statistics, political science, and computer science. Many early-career scientists will also contribute to this unique international consortium.

Why SOLVE? Addressing the Climate-Health-Food Nexus

Climate extreme events such as heat, floods, and wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and severity, threatening agricultural output, natural ecosystems, and livelihoods. In places that experience water scarcity, climate change intensifies competition for water resources, amplifying the vulnerability of ecosystems and human populations, especially the vulnerable groups such as small-scale producers. Climate-induced shocks in crucial food-producing regions may lead to global food price spikes, market volatility, and trade disruptions, reducing food imports for the world's poorest nations. Climate change is therefore likely to increase all forms of malnutrition, including hunger and obesity.

The persistent underestimation of climate impacts in models used to assess adaptation needs, attributed to the inadequate representation of climate extreme hazards, raises substantial concerns. Climate models exhibit limitations in accurately predicting the severity of extreme events, especially at the local scale. Existing integrated models do not explicitly represent the impacts of climate change on the vulnerable population, and most modelling approaches lack the transparency and flexibility needed for local researchers to co-develop and test alternative pathways with stakeholders. The SOLVE project responds to the urgent need for integrated solutions that address both sides of the challenge: supporting farmers in adapting to climate extremes while encouraging the production of foods aligned with healthy, sustainable diets.

What Will SOLVE Do?

SOLVE will develop new modules for the FABLE modelling framework to support case studies in nine countries: Argentina, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, India, Mexico, Nepal, Norway, and Türkiye. Each partner will contribute to methodological developments based on their expertise and will provide them to the rest of the Consortium. The enriched integrated modelling framework will be used to design local adaptation roadmaps in the face of future climate change, including extreme climate events. The case studies vary in their focus regarding stakeholders and include farmers, consumers, and other actors in the agri-food value chain.

This will require innovations on several fronts:

  • Design and use of participatory modeling approaches.
  • Development of national and regional scenarios for future climate hazards.
  • Computation of climate change impacts on multi-species health, biodiversity, and vulnerable groups in society.
  • Inclusion of resilience indicators in food and land pathways.
  • Dietary changes will be an important component of these adaptation roadmaps and will be framed with local stakeholders, taking into account local preferences, affordability, and impacts on human and environmental health using a One Health approach, and resilience to climate shocks.

Building on existing relationships between scientific project partners and societal partners, and starting new collaborations at the local level, the project will increase local knowledge and ensure that the project outputs align with societal needs.

Our Funding Partners

SOLVE has been selected as part of the Climate Environment and Health (CEH) 2 call issued in 2023. The Belmont Forum is an international partnership of funding organizations, international science councils, and regional consortia that aligns and mobilizes funding of environmental change research and accelerates its delivery to remove critical barriers to sustainability. It supports research projects that require international cooperation and interdisciplinary approaches to tackle complex issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable development. This is a great fit for FABLE and its decentralised collaborative approach to model food and land issues at multiple scales.

Unfortunately, the US budgetary cuts announced in early 2025 have impacted the capacity of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change (IAI) and Future Earth (FE) to fund SOLVE partners from Central and South America and Asia. This decision has limited the number of funded partners and case studies to France through France's National Research Agency (Agence nationale de la recherche), Norway and Ethiopia through the Research Council of Norway (Norges forskningsråd), and Türkiye through the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK). While other SOLVE partners from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, India, and Nepal remain committed to collaborating with SOLVE and contributing with in-kind participation, we are actively looking for alternative funding for these partners. If you are interested in supporting this effort, please contact info.fable@unsdsn.org.