Designing partnerships with scalable solutions and financing in mind.Expanding and deepening collaboration Stage 3 As described above, partnerships often benefit from starting small, with a limited, closely-aligned group of collaborators in the early stages. However, to go beyond isolated outcomes and achieve systemic impact, it is critical that partnerships are designed from the outset to scale-up. Early decisions on governance, data-sharing and decision-making frameworks should allow for future expansion and inclusion of new partners. TfS exemplifies this approach with inclusive, member-led governance and clear anti-trust guidelines, enabling its growth from six founding partners to over 50 multinational chemical companies and their suppliers. Similarly, BbN’s scalable network model enables replication of governance and decision-making approaches in new cities, addressing country-specific challenges. To drive system-wide change, partnerships must also ensure that scalability is built into the solutions they design, by ensuring they are suitable for industry-wide adoption and expansion to new users. HYBRIT’s strategy of securing patents for its technology facilitates industry-wide transformation through commercial licensing. CAD Trust’s metadata platform and TfS’s PCF data exchange prioritize interoperability, for carbon markets and GHG emission methodologies respectively, to encourage broader adoption and participation. Another example is Decarbonising Rice, a philanthropically funded research project designed to scale-up innovative regenerative agriculture practices across regions through widespread farmer adoption (see Box 1). It achieves this by partnering with social enterprises and governments to engage local farmers and develop region-specific baselines. To drive large- scale adoption, the programme is ensuring that the solution offers multiple revenue streams for farmers – collaborating with MRV organizations to enable carbon credit income and pursuing offtake agreements with private sector partners to support scalability. Access to sustainable financing is also key to long- term scalability. For cross-sector partnerships, there is broad consensus that engaging the private sector is crucial for unlocking impact at scale. GEAPP is a highly effective example: although philanthropy- led, GEAPP’s global leadership has included private sector representation from its inception, ensuring cross-sector input into strategic decisions. GEAPP also supports a pipeline of renewable energy projects and solutions, for example through the BESS Consortium, designed to attract private sector investment and to be implemented within local private sector value chains. For cross-sector partnerships led by philanthropies, non-profits or development banks, transitioning from lending- based models to designing projects as investable opportunities for the private sector from the outset is crucial to achieve scale and impact. To go beyond isolated outcomes and achieve systemic impact, it is critical that partnerships are designed from the outset to scale-up. Decarbonising Rice, by Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory – Winner, 2025 GAEA Award for Breakthrough Scientific ContributionBOX 1 Despite surging demand, rice yields have been stagnating for this vital staple food in Asia. Rice is not only a victim of climate change, it is also a contributor, producing some 10% of global methane emissions. The Decarbonising Rice project, led by Singapore’s Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), provides an innovative solution for rice cultivation that reduces GHG emissions, reduces water use and improves yields. This multi-stakeholder partnership applies a novel methodology including climate-resilient rice varieties, water use management through controlled irrigation, and soil health management through customized fertigation. This sustainable approach also aims to stabilize and augment the livelihoods of small-scale rice producers, who comprise 80% of rice farmers in Southeast Asia. TLL partners with public agencies, social enterprises, private sector companies, philanthropies and farmer cooperatives. These partnerships operate in different ways – researching, forming joint ventures, convening with industry to problem solve and developing funding mechanisms. In the Decarbonising Rice project, government organizations, for instance, provide expertise to execute trials, while local research organizations connect participants for field implementation. A steering committee provides partners a forum for communicating, assessing successes and failures, and surfacing new ideas and solutions. As rice production and supply chains are so fragmented, collaboration is essential to disseminate knowledge and engender trust and a sense of ownership among farmers. TLL sees science as the glue that unites stakeholders and builds connections. Through the Decarbonising Rice project, TLL plans to leverage the specific skillsets and resources of partners, offtakers, microfinance institutions and monitoring organizations to refine carbon credit methodologies, with the final aim to de-risk solutions, secure climate benefits and improve income for farmers. Source: see endnote.24 Making Collaboration Work for Climate and Nature: Practical Insights from GAEA Award Winners 22