Market and ecosystem development, whether operating upstream through policy and institutional strengthening or midstream through market engagement, piloting innovative models, and scaling relevant approaches, requires a systems perspective to both design and funding approaches.
This piece draws on four case studies — ITAD’s review of scaling models in coastal adaptation (ITAD), the Consortium of Agroecological Transition (CAT), CGIAR’s innovation and scaling readiness frameworks, and the UNDP Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN)— to identify shared learnings on how to design, fund, and sustain inclusive approaches to systems change.
Four cross-cutting learnings that emerge:
- Embrace complexity and trade-offs. Defining inclusive innovation and inclusive scaling is not easy. Inclusive scaling is deeply context specific. Measuring systemic change requires understanding trade-offs: who is the scale meant for, and who benefits? ITAD’s review of scaling models in coastal adaptation shows how different scaling pathways interact with inclusion goals, and how trade-offs between efficiency, financial viability, and justice can be managed. Similarly, BIOFIN’s work has shown that a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme that pays landowners may exclude women if they don’t hold formal land titles. Gender and power inequalities do not begin in the field; these biases are systemic and prevalent throughout innovation and scaling systems. To enable teams to manage trade-offs and navigate complexity, team diversity plays a key role, with gender and skills mix (social, economic, technical) both needed in design teams.
- Multiple pathways need a portfolio approach. Each study demonstrates the need for a combination of pathways in a portfolio approach. CAT’s landscape-based approach, spanning short-term (1–5 years), medium-term (5–20 years), and long-term (20+ years) transformation, is an example of this. CGIAR’s work on scaling readiness framework recommends using a scoring framework to assess innovation readiness and innovation use across programs and teams. The framework provides an evidence-based assessment for decisions on scale and funding. BIOFIN also uses a feasibility framework to prioritise solutions based on the likelihood of success and expected impact on nature, finance, institutional change, policy change and socio-environmental co-benefits. A portfolio approach to design requires a portfolio approach to financing. Portfolio planning and separate targets for mobilisation, transition finance and catalytic capital would help funding providers to build capital structures that balance financial sustainability, with flexible timelines and learning-oriented milestones.
- Systems change requires institutional incentives and capacity. The skills needed for innovation and systems change require teams with facilitation, negotiation, systems thinking, and multi-stakeholder coordination skills. Tools such as theories of scaling, systemic analytical frameworks, and participatory monitoring can help organisations surface trade-offs and monitor changes with scale, yet frameworks without capacity may enable procedural rather than transformative participation. Incentive systems that reward skills such as self-assessment, participatory modes, and multidisciplinary and mixed-methods monitoring are also tools to build capacity for learning and innovation. Further, the capacity can be facilitated and expanded through strategic partnerships. CGIAR’s work on Comparative Advantage analysis highlights how identifying the relative strengths and capabilities across institutions that collaborate and specialise to achieve shared goals can enhance their impact on global agricultural development.
- Relational dimension of change needs greater attention. There is a dimension of this work that does not always appear in frameworks, which is the challenge of sustaining motivation and creative energy across long, complex, uncertain processes and programs. Systems change work spans years and decades. It involves working with multiple, sometimes contradictory challenges simultaneously — climate change, livelihood vulnerability, biodiversity loss, political resistance, and uncertain institutional timelines. The relational and practitioner dimension of change is not peripheral. Mission-focused organisations need to pay equal attention to how they collaborate, how they handle disagreement and difficulty, and how they build personal and collective resilience to innovation and change. Business Fights Poverty’s note on Managing Change guides how mission-focused organisations can collaborate effectively.
These learnings have implications for how programmes are designed (with flexibility and learning built in), how they are financed (with instruments matched to context and risk profile), how institutions are structured (with incentives that reward participation, collaboration, and trade-off analysis), and how people are supported to sustain the work overtime. Yet, pathways and portfolio management both require making deliberate choices about prioritisation and funding through ongoing learning and iteration.
The case studies referenced are presented as practical illustrations of these principles rather than exhaustive reviews
Case Study 1: ITAD Review of Scaling Models in Coastal Adaptation
As part of the COAST programme that aims to strengthen adaptive capacity, climate resilience, and prosperity for vulnerable coastal communities in low- and middle-income countries, ITAD has conducted an evidence review of different scaling models. Inclusive scaling is defined in the study as the expansion of adaptation efforts that deliberately address power relations, social inequalities, and differential access to resources and decision-making. For coastal adaptation where climate risks intersect with poverty, gender inequality, and contested resource rights, the study highlights that scaling is not a neutral process, but a political one. It identifies three phases in the evolution of scaling thinking:
- Initial programs equated scaling with the widespread rollout of specific technologies or practices, assuming diffusion alone would deliver benefits.
- Gradual recognition of scaling as a process embedded within social, institutional, and market systems, requiring coordination across multiple actors and governance levels.
- Current discourse positions scaling not as expanding a single solution, but as pursuing outcomes at scale through portfolios of complementary innovations and partnerships, continuously adapted through learning and iteration. The study highlights six pathways for scaling coastal adaptation.
Critically, adaptation finance is delivered primarily through a small number of multilateral mechanisms (GCF, bilateral DFIs, MDBs). Increasing reliance on market-based instruments such as green bonds, resilience bonds, insurance products, and tradable credits has broader implications on scaling priorities. The study calls for dedicated financing windows for high-risk, low-return opportunities, such as small-grant facilities, micro-investment platforms, and climate risk guarantee schemes tailored to MSMEs, women, and climate-vulnerable livelihoods.
Case Study 2: Consortium of Agroecological Transition (CAT) – Scaling Agroecology for small-holder farmers
India faces a dual challenge to increase agricultural productivity while ensuring sustainability. 85% of farmers are smallholders, with mechanisation not being viable for them, 50% of cropped area is under rain-fed irrigation, and over 60% of agricultural workers are women, yet they remain underrepresented in land ownership and finance. CAT aspires to enable a systemic shift toward agroecology-driven farming practices in India, recognising regeneration, resilience, and equity as central values.
CAT defines a landscape as the block-level administrative unit, the minimum viable scale where ecological processes, social institutions, and governance mechanisms converge. Using an agroecology matrix allows interventions to be systematically designed, tracked, and aggregated. Governance is structured around multi-stakeholder platforms that bring together farmers, women’s self-help groups, extension officers, district planners, and researchers. CAT has assessed 18 potential landscapes using a structured, comparative scoring framework and recognises different time horizons: short-term (1–5 years) for practice adoption and training; medium-term (5–20 years) for recovery of soil fertility and biodiversity; and long-term (20+ years) for climate resilience, cultural shifts, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.
The next frontier is mobilising finance that matches the ecological timeframes. This includes attracting patient capital, leveraging technical and local expertise, and building legitimacy for agroecology as a scalable climate adaptation strategy.
Case Study 3: One CGIAR – Scaling Readiness Through Innovation Packaging
One CGIAR is a global research partnership of approximately 10,000 staff across 12 Centres with a mission “to deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land and water systems in a climate crisis.” As part of the institutional reform process (2019–2023), One CGIAR developed three interlinked operational frameworks to guide its research portfolio.
- Quality of Research for Development (QoR4D) assesses research across four dimensions: relevance, scientific credibility, legitimacy, and effectiveness. These map to 17 granular criteria for proposal assessment, ensuring research is designed with explicit pathways to development outcomes.
- Comparative Advantage (CA) Analysis helps identify organisational strengths and foster purposeful partnerships. Unlike competitive advantage (outperforming others), CA emphasises collaboration and specialisation to achieve shared goals. The process involves four steps: describing deliverables, identifying partners, assessing trade-offs, and planning partnerships.
- Inclusive Innovation is defined as developing goods and services for and by those excluded from the development mainstream. It is not a product but a contextualised process engaging local actors as drivers of innovation. Four strategies support it: navigating trade-offs, strengthening partnerships, fostering institutional change, and using alternative measurement approaches.
A separate but complementary CGIAR methodology of Scaling Readiness recommends a systematic, evidence-based approach to assess and guide the scaling of innovations. Scaling Readiness uses two core metrics: Innovation Readiness (0–9), measuring the strength of evidence that an innovation works under controlled and uncontrolled conditions; and Innovation Use (0–9), measuring the extent to which an innovation is already used by different actors. The framework is used to develop Innovation Packages, a combination of core innovations, complementary innovations, and enabling conditions (e.g., capacity sharing, inclusive policies, digital tools). The frameworks and tools are relevant and practical for other organisations to design and monitor what is being scaled, for whom, when, with what resources, for what purpose, and to avoid what potential harm.
Case Study 4: UNDP BIOFIN – Portfolio of Finance Solutions
The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), launched by UNDP in 2012, addresses a fundamental challenge: how to finance biodiversity conservation and nature-positive transitions. As per the UNEP State of Finance for Nature report, there is a USD 4.1 trillion gap in resources needed to meet global targets for 2030. Active in over 130 countries, BIOFIN has helped catalyse more than US$1.6 billion for nature through innovative financial solutions tailored to national contexts.
The BIOFIN Catalogue of Finance Solutions is a comprehensive, open-source repository of over 150 financial instruments, tools, and strategies applicable to biodiversity finance. The catalogue organises solutions by four financial results:
- Generate new revenue for biodiversity (e.g., environmental taxes, green bonds)
- Realign existing financial flows away from harmful activities (e.g., reforming agricultural subsidies)
- Avoid future expenditures by eliminating counterproductive policies (e.g., taxes on pesticides and fertilisers)
- Deliver more cost-effectively (e.g., protected area fees, results-based budgeting)
The catalogue is designed for flexibility. Solutions can be used alone or in combination, drawing from public revenues (taxes, grants), private capital (bank lending, bonds), or blended structures (public guarantees, public-private partnerships).
As part of Biodiversity finance planning, guiding principles are used to prioritise and select 10-15 recommended solutions that provide a balanced portfolio: The finance approaches should cover all four of the BIOFIN results highlighted above. Ensure a good mix of private finance, and public sector finance solutions and a mix of short-, medium- and long-term initiatives. All finance solutions should have sustainable development safeguards, so as not to cause harm to vulnerable groups or result in a net loss for sustainable development. BIOFIN is a critical resource to operationalise the multiple pathways approach and match financial instruments to specific conservation and adaptation goals across different sectors and geographies.
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