What ASCEND does
ASCEND aims to accelerate discoveries for more rapid, equitable, and sustained action on climate change and development for vulnerable people and places.
ASCEND provides specialised infrastructure for enabling collaborative teamwork across research, policy, and practice that integrates diverse data and knowledge, and accelerates solutions-oriented research for enhancing action on climate change and development.
We do this by:
The 2020s are a critical decade for climate action. Decision-makers, practitioners, and researchers must address complex problems that cut across disciplines, geographies and socioeconomic divides to enable the transformative change necessary to secure a sustainable future for all. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty are interlinked problems that cannot be solved by any single discipline. A lack of data and knowledge synthesis limits breakthrough research and decision-making.
The good news is a wealth of diverse data and knowledge already exist on climate change risks and response options. Yet these data often remain poorly integrated and so the potentially transformative insights they hold for climate change and development action remain largely unrealised. This is especially true in Africa.
Sophisticated equipment like a radio telescope or mass spectrometer is often essential for scientific discovery. But in this age of complex social and environmental challenges another form of research infrastructure is now essential too: synthesis centres.
These specialise in bringing together research teams across many disciplines, sectors, and systems to integrate diverse data and accelerate solution-oriented research discoveries and decision-making.
ASCEND provides a physical and virtual space designed for researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners to form teams, collaborate, integrate diverse data and knowledge, and to accelerate research for climate change and development action.