Environmental Pollution Programme

Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs

The Environmental Pollution Programme’s aim is to work with ODA-eligible countries and regions to reduce the adverse impacts of pollution. Work will improve health and reduce environmental harm and poverty that results from chemical, air, waste and water pollution, as part of the Triple Planetary Crisis. 2021-22: Scoping year to share expertise, best practice and invest in research to strengthen the capacity of low- and middle-income countries to meet their obligations under UN Multilateral Environment Agreements and frameworks. 2022-2025: Phase one delivering two multi-year projects in Vietnam and South Africa through delivery partners Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and in country organisations. The programme reduced pollution and its impacts on the environment and health by promoting sustainable, economically viable practices, strengthening regulations, and enhancing awareness through multi-sector engagement, robust evidence projects, capacity building and monitoring to support policymaking. 2025-26: This year’s programme will build and expand on the successful approaches on reducing air pollution and increasing uptake of integrated pest management in Vietnam, adding new work on waste and plastic pollution. Work in Uganda will focus on developing a Health and Pollution Action Plan, creating a framework for future action that is aligned with priorities of national stakeholders. The programme will also establish Regional Pollution Forums, working in a multilateral way to amplify impact by spreading knowledge of successful interventions.

Screen4SpLDs - Development of an Automated Pre-Screening Tool for Specific Learning Disabilities in Children.

DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Specific Learning Disabilities (SpLDs) is a common term in today's society, which manifests in different ways and can cause various difficulties in daily life. For one person it might be the lack of attention, for another, it might be struggling to read fluently or conduct basic mathematical calculations; these are different groups of Learning Disabilities. Early detection and treatment of SpLDs are crucial, as it enables the start of interventions that support the best outcomes for children living with SLDs. Not addressing SLDs at a young age has a major influence on development into adulthood and results in a high economic cost, exceeding the lifetime costs of asthma, intellectual disability, and diabetes have a huge shortage of special educators to conduct SLDs screening and subsequently providing treatment post diagnosis. There are nearly 90% of the world's children reside in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). The challenge of early detection and early intervention of SpLDs is exacerbated by limited expertise, including limited screening, diagnostic and treatment resources in LMICs. For instance, in the Global South, the skilled human resource and tools to assess SpLDs are very limited. Thus, these children are undiagnosed and negatively reinforced by the community by stigmatizing and labelling them. These factors all lead to low self-esteem and behavior problems that further interfere with their ability to learn. In vulnerable communities, which are often already poverty stricken, this operates as a vicious cycle, simply because optimal education is the main method of breaking this vicious cycle. We aim to target these developmental issues by developing and piloting low-cost mobile app-based solution for the screening of SpLDs that will lead to early intervention. Specific learning disorder may affect handwriting in a way that can be visually distinguished. The purpose of the proposed research is to evaluate the ability of deep learning to distinguish between those who have SpLDs and those who do not, from their handwriting. The proposed solution requires no more than taking a photo of the handwritten image on a mobile phone and passing it to the prediction model and getting the prediction results. Based on the proposed solution, the SpLDs screening can be conducted at home, in a school study area without any additional special setting. The important factors of this app are simplicity, ease of use, less training requirement, the accuracy of the results, and reliability. This app can serve from individual to national level for screening SpLDs in children. This will reduce the burden of the shortage of special educators, and this will be a huge relief for LMICs. This will, in general, reduce the inequalities faced by vulnerable and marginalized children, by providing an opportunity to receive optimal health and educational services. This will lead to the improvement of quality education received by ALL which in turn will contribute to wider societal improvements. In addition to the direct impact on the child, the spillover effects on the family and community development are significant. Further, creating an opportunity to screen a larger population will increase societal awareness of SpLDs and reduce the stigma

Sustaining Power: Women's struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia

DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Women in South Asia have struggled for many decades to improve their lives within their families, in their communities, for securing their livelihoods, and in getting their voices heard as citizens by the state, with women's movements being critical in advancing their rights. However, contemporary social, economic and political changes have created new and multiple forms of backlash and contestations. How do women defend their rights, and secure their gains against these regressive forces and backlash? This question leads our research on the strategies and mechanisms that women use to retain power and sustain gains in women's rights. This research is particularly interested in how different groups of women understanding power and struggle, and how these change over time. We aim to assess what works to defend women's rights, and explain why some struggles are more successful than others in sustaining gains. We think that success of women's struggles depends on a) the types of strategies they use to counter different types of backlash; b) the ways in which struggles include voices and perspectives of different groups of women; and c) the ways in which struggles connect to other movements and groups across local, regional and national levels. The central research question therefore is: When, how, and why do women's power struggles succeed in retaining power and sustaining their gains against backlash? South Asia provides a valuable opportunity to investigate women's struggles. The region has witnessed rapid and large changes over the last decade, including urbanization, rising employment precarity, new electoral laws and regime changes, shifts in social norms, and the spread of digital technology. We aim to examine how these changes create new and multiple forms of backlash; and how women's struggles for power are variously challenged, opened up or are closed down by these changes. We are interested in unraveling the similarities and differences in processes and strategies used by different women's movements to retain power in the face of backlash; and in women's own experiences and interpretations of their struggles as these evolve and adapt over time. We will select 16 cases of women's struggles in four countries that represent the largest populations of South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Within each country, we will select on-going and contentious cases of struggle in one of four arenas within which gains in women's rights are being sought: family, community, market and the state. This research will use a variety of methods including: a) identifying and analyzing the types of backlash created by processes of contemporary change; b) mapping critical players and what shapes their motivations for action; c) tracing the struggles, nature and trajectory of each movement to counter backlash - through oral history methods, reflective and participatory techniques, qualitative interviews and archival research; d) undertaking comparative analysis to compare how different movements may have triggered, galvanized or been strengthened by power struggles across different arenas; and e) identifying and systematizing which combinations of mechanisms and strategies work to defend women's rights in South Asia and beyond. This is a collaborative research project that draws together a multi-disciplinary research team with deep in-country and conceptual expertise on women's rights and contemporary power struggles in South Asia. This project includes strong capacity building initiatives and opportunities for learning through reflective processes with women's movements and research partners. This research is ambitious in its scope and we hope that our findings that will be grounded in real life experiences of women, will be relevant and useful for feminist scholars, activists and policy actors to set their future course of action to defend women's rights across the world.

Touchkin eServices Private Limited

British International Investment plc

Wysa is is an AI-powered mental health app that has been shown to help improve mental health. It uses AI to deliver clinical grade digital therapeutics along with human support and is used by 4 million users globally across 65 countries.

India Value Fund III

British International Investment plc

This is a 2007 vintage fund with a focus on SMEs in India.

Baring India Private Equity Fund III Ltd

British International Investment plc

This is a generalist private equity growth fund in India.

Kotak India Private Equity Fund Limited

British International Investment plc

Mid cap fund investing in India

Zhenfa Pakistan New Energy Company (Pvt) Ltd

British International Investment plc

Zhenfa Pakistan New Energy Company (Private) Limited specialises in investing, developing and commissioning solar power projects in Pakistan. Finance the construction and operation of a 100MW solar PV power plant to be located near Multan, Punjab, Pakistan.

Aavas Financiers Limited

British International Investment plc

Aavas is a retail-focused affordable housing company primarily serving low and middle-income borrowers in semi-urban and rural areas.

Aavishkaar India Fund VI

British International Investment plc

Aavishkaar Venture Management Services is a venture capital firm specializing in early stage and expansion capital.

Aavishkaar India Fund VI seeks to invest in early-growth companies with strong impact potential across financial inclusion, sustainable agriculture and essential services in India. Aavishkaar has reached over 8 million underserved people and created over 17,000 jobs through its investments across its previous funds. It remains focused on the low-income population in India. Aavishkaar India Fund VI is a 2X Flagship Fund and has committed to investing in at least 30 per cent of underlying portfolio companies that meet the 2X criteria.

AkshayaKalpa Farms and Foods Private Limited

British International Investment plc

Akshayakalpa is a fully-integrated direct to consumer dairy brand in South India. The company aims to increase sustainable and regenerative farming in India while improving the nutritional impact of dairy products available to consumers. It is India?s first certified organic and Fairtrade dairy enterprise.

Arkam Ventures Fund I (Unitary Fund)

British International Investment plc

Arkam Ventures is an early-stage venture capital investor focused on high-growth, technology-driven companies that are serving ?Middle India?.

Arkam Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in highly scalable, technology-driven companies that are serving the mass market in India.

Blume Ventures India Fund IV

British International Investment plc

Blume Ventures is a venture capital firm specialising in start-up financing for India.

Blume Ventures India Fund IV is a venture capital fund investing in tech-led start-ups, with the aim to solve hard problems and impact large markets in India.

Elevar India V

British International Investment plc

Elevar Equity is a private equity and venture capital firm specializing in early stage investments and growth equity investments.

Elevar India V is managed by Elevar Partners. Elevar invests minority stakes in early-stage companies providing essential goods and services to underserved low-income populations in India. The fund will target companies across four key themes which include financial inclusion, agriculture, education, and MSMEs providing business services across healthcare, housing, and through marketplaces.It's one of the few funds in India targeting solution-oriented businesses, which enable marginalised customers to overcome barriers of inequality and difficulty accessing goods and services. Through its existing four funds, Elevar has supported the creation of approximately 70,000 jobs, served 370,000 SMEs and 310,000 smallholder farmers, and provided loans to 20 million women borrowers through Monetary Financial Institutions.

Jinnat Textile Mills Limited

British International Investment plc

Jinnat Textile Mills Limited is a greenfield, cotton yarn spinning mill and is part of the DBL Group, a textiles group in Bangladesh.

Kinara Capital

British International Investment plc

Founded in 2011, Kinara Capital is a tech-enabled leading provider of unsecured small business loans in India to micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), focusing on manufacturing and trading in urban and semi-urban cities. Headquartered in Bangalore, it is active in six states and over 90 cities in South and West India through its 125 branches and it has over 30,000 active borrowers.

Light Microfinance Private Limited

British International Investment plc

Light Microfinance is a Non-Banking Finance Company registered with the Reserve Bank Of India. Light Microfinance provides microfinance products and services, targeting rural and peri-urban areas, with a specific focus on women. The company operates in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.

Lok Capital IV LLC

British International Investment plc

Lok IV, managed by Lok Investment Management Limited, is a $150 million to $180 million SME-focused fund which will invest in financial services businesses and technology-enabled business models in agriculture, healthcare and climate. The fund aims to support inclusive and sustainable growth in India by catering to lower-income and underserved communities.

Mahindra Electric Automobile Limited

British International Investment plc

Mahindra Electric Automobile Limited (MEAL) is a new four-wheeler passenger electric vehicle venture company launched by Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), a leading Indian automotive group.

Mintoak Innovations Private Limited

British International Investment plc

Mintoak provides a digital payments platform for MSME retail merchants. It does this by working with banking partners to deploy and scale value-added services (payments, lending, engagement) to their MSME customers.