UK consultancy bridging governance and climate adaptation for food security and water resilience in developing regions.
Transparency Solutions Limited is a UK-based private consultancy that brings governance, transparency, and policy expertise into European research consortia. Their work spans two distinct but connected domains: conflict prevention and civilian peace-building capabilities on one hand, and climate adaptation with a focus on food security and water resources in developing regions on the other. In practice, they appear to contribute specialist knowledge in citizen engagement, international development frameworks, and translating complex information into decision-relevant formats for non-technical audiences. The DOWN2EARTH project specifically positions them at the intersection of climate science communication, hydrological decision support, and vulnerable community resilience — likely in sub-Saharan Africa or the Horn of Africa given the agro-pastoralist focus.
DOWN2EARTH (2020–2025) involves translating climate information into multilevel decision support for social adaptation, with explicit focus on agro-pastoralists and groundwater.
DOWN2EARTH keywords include water resources, hydrology, groundwater, food security, and agro-pastoralists — all pointing to applied development work in water-stressed regions.
EU-CIVCAP (2015–2018) focused on developing EU civilian capabilities for sustainable peace and conflict response.
Citizen science appears as a keyword in DOWN2EARTH, suggesting a methodological contribution in community-based data collection or co-design.
Both projects — civilian capabilities for peace (EU-CIVCAP) and climate-driven social adaptation (DOWN2EARTH) — operate in international development and governance frameworks.
Their first H2020 project (EU-CIVCAP, 2015–2018) placed them squarely in the EU security and peacebuilding space — developing civilian response capabilities for conflict situations. By 2020 they had shifted toward climate-driven vulnerability in developing regions, with DOWN2EARTH bringing in a completely new vocabulary: hydrology, groundwater, agro-pastoralists, food security. The through-line connecting both phases is international development and policy-to-practice translation — helping institutions act on complex information in fragile or under-resourced contexts. The trend is a clear move away from European security policy toward climate-food-water challenges in the Global South.
They are moving toward the climate-development nexus — specifically translating hydrological and climate science into actionable support for food-insecure, water-stressed communities — making them a relevant partner for Horizon Europe projects on climate resilience in Africa or the MENA region.
Transparency Solutions has never led an H2020 project — they enter exclusively as consortium participants, suggesting they are brought in for specialist knowledge rather than project management capacity. Their 25 unique partners across 10 countries over just 2 projects indicates they join large, multi-institutional consortia rather than tight bilateral arrangements. This profile is typical of specialist consultancies that add policy, governance, or stakeholder engagement expertise to technically-led consortia.
Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 25 unique consortium partners across 10 countries — a broad network relative to their project volume, reflecting the large multi-partner consortia typical of RIA and CSA funding schemes. Their geographic reach extends beyond Europe into the Global South given the international development focus of their recent work.
What sets Transparency Solutions apart is the unusual pairing of European security/governance expertise with applied climate-water-food work in developing regions — a combination rarely found in a single small UK firm. For consortium builders, they offer a bridge between the policy and practitioner worlds, particularly valuable in projects that need to translate scientific outputs into community-level or institutional decision-making. Their lack of coordinator experience means they are a lean, focused contributor rather than a project management resource.
