The Belmont Forum is a partnership of national research-funding agencies, international science councils, and regional consortia that jointly finance transnational, transdisciplinary research on global environmental change. It is not a single grant-making body with a pooled budget: it is a coordination mechanism through which member agencies co-design joint calls and then each fund their own country’s successful applicants. If you administer or apply for international research grants, understanding how Belmont Forum funding actually flows — and how it differs from the far better-known Belmont Report — matters for budgeting, subrecipient structuring, and compliance.
Note on naming: the Belmont Forum has no connection to the Belmont Report, the 1979 U.S. human-subjects research-ethics document that established the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice underlying the Common Rule (45 CFR 46). The two share a name by coincidence of geography — the ethics report is named after the Belmont Conference Center in Elkridge, Maryland, where the drafting commission met, while the funders’ forum takes its name from the Belmont, California villa where its founding meeting was held in 2009. A research administrator searching “Belmont Forum” is almost always looking for the funding consortium covered on this page, not the ethics document; if you landed here looking for informed-consent principles, see the Belmont Report and Common Rule entries instead.
What the Belmont Forum is
The Belmont Forum grew out of the International Group of Funding Agencies for Global Change Research (IGFA) and was formally established in 2009, co-founded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Its stated mission is to build a transdisciplinary community that advances research on global environmental change and removes barriers to sustainability science through international cooperation. As of its most recent published figures, the Forum comprises roughly 28 member funding agencies spanning six continents, together with associate and collaborative-partner organizations, and its activity has engaged more than 1,000 researchers and stakeholders across dozens of countries since inception. Membership is not static: new organizations are elected to Belmont Forum membership each year at the Forum’s plenary meeting. The Belmont Forum Secretariat is hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) in Panama.
Typical member and associate agencies include national science funders such as NSF (United States), NERC (United Kingdom), the DFG and BMBF (Germany), ANR (France), the NSFC (China), FAPESP (Brazil), the NRF (South Africa), and MEXT (Japan), alongside intergovernmental and regional science bodies. Because membership and named agencies change from year to year as organizations join or roll off, always confirm current membership against the Forum’s own published member list (belmontforum.org) rather than relying on a fixed roster.
How Belmont Forum funding actually works
This is the detail research offices most often get wrong: the Belmont Forum itself does not hold or disburse a pooled international grant budget. Its primary funding instrument is the Collaborative Research Action (CRA) — a jointly announced, thematically scoped call that requires an international, transdisciplinary consortium (natural scientists, social scientists, and societal/non-academic partners together) drawn from at least three participating countries. Each national funding agency then evaluates and funds only the portion of the consortium based in its own country, under its own normal rules, using its own money. There is no single pot of Belmont Forum funds a US, UK, or Japanese team draws from jointly; a US researcher’s share is paid by NSF under NSF terms, a UK partner’s share by NERC (now part of UKRI) under UKRI terms, and so on, coordinated so that all national awards start and align around the same joint project.
Practically, this has several consequences for grants administrators:
- Budget and terms follow the national funder, not the CRA. Allowable costs, indirect-cost/overhead treatment, reporting cadence, and award terms are set by whichever national agency is funding your institution’s slice of the project — not by a uniform Belmont Forum-wide policy.
- Not every consortium partner is separately fundable. If your country’s agency isn’t a current Belmont Forum member or associate for that particular call, a partner based there typically has to be self-funded or funded through another mechanism, which needs to be resolved before a proposal is submitted, not after.
- Coordination overhead is real. Because each national leg is a separate award with its own start date, review cycle, and reporting requirements, project coordinators need to track multiple funder relationships in parallel rather than administering a single consolidated grant.
- Open science and data-sharing expectations are set collectively. The Forum promotes open access to project data and has published data-management-plan guidance and an associated DMP assessment rubric that CRA-funded projects are generally expected to follow, in addition to whatever data policy each national funder separately imposes. See CASRAI’s DMP assessment entry, which references the Belmont Forum DMP rubric directly, and the related DMP Review Criteria guide for how such rubrics are typically applied.
Typical CRA call structure
Collaborative Research Action calls are usually announced jointly by the Belmont Forum and a co-funding partner (for example, a scientific programme such as Future Earth in earlier calls) around a defined environmental-change theme — recent and past CRA themes have spanned topics like biodiversity and ecosystem services, climate predictability, food-water-energy nexus challenges, disaster risk reduction, and ocean sustainability. A call typically proceeds through:
- A joint call announcement naming the participating national funding agencies for that specific round (not every member agency participates in every CRA) and the eligible countries whose researchers may apply for national funding.
- A single, harmonized international proposal submitted by the full consortium describing the joint science plan, even though funding decisions are made nationally.
- Parallel national eligibility and merit review, run by each participating agency against its own criteria, coordinated so that a consortium is only funded if enough of its national partners are separately approved.
- Separate national award agreements, each governed by that funder’s standard grant terms, with a shared project start typically synchronized across the consortium.
Belmont Forum vs. a single-country funder: the key distinction
For research administrators used to a single funding agency issuing one award with one set of terms, the Belmont Forum model is a genuinely different mechanism, not just an international version of the same thing. A useful comparison point on this site is NERC Funding, which explains how the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council — a Belmont Forum member in its own right — funds environmental science domestically; a Belmont Forum CRA involving a UK partner would run through that same NERC mechanism for the UK leg, layered under the Forum’s joint call structure. Similarly, NSF’s collaborative-proposal guidance on separately submitted proposals is conceptually close to how a US institution’s share of a Belmont Forum CRA is typically structured and reviewed on the NSF side.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Belmont Forum the same as the Belmont Report?
No. They are unrelated organizations that happen to share a place name. The Belmont Report is the 1979 US ethics document underpinning human-subjects protections and the Common Rule; the Belmont Forum is a 2009-founded international consortium of research-funding agencies focused on environmental-change science. If your interest is informed consent, IRB review, or research-ethics principles, the Belmont Report is what you want; if your interest is international collaborative grant funding for climate, biodiversity, or sustainability research, it’s the Belmont Forum.
Does the Belmont Forum give grants directly to researchers?
No. It coordinates joint international calls (Collaborative Research Actions), but the actual grant award, funding, and administration for each country’s researchers comes from that country’s own national funding agency under that agency’s normal rules and budget.
Who can apply to a Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Action?
Eligibility is set per call and depends on which national funding agencies are participating in that specific CRA round. A consortium generally needs partners from at least three countries whose national agencies are participating in that call, spanning natural science, social science, and non-academic/societal-partner roles. Always check the specific CRA call text for the current list of participating agencies and eligible countries rather than assuming full Forum membership applies uniformly.
What is required for data management under a Belmont Forum award?
Belmont Forum-funded projects are generally expected to produce a data management plan aligned with the Forum’s open-data expectations, in addition to whatever DMP requirement the specific national funder imposes. See CASRAI’s Data Management Plan (DMP) entry and the FAIR Data Principles entry for the underlying concepts, and the Horizon Europe FAIR DMP guide for a comparable funder-driven DMP framework in a different multinational context.
Where can I find current Belmont Forum member agencies and open calls?
Because membership and active CRA calls change year to year, the Forum’s own site (belmontforum.org) is the authoritative current source — treat any fixed list published elsewhere, including summaries on this page, as a snapshot that needs reconfirming at proposal time.
