Radical collaboration to address the climate emergency
“Climate change is one of the greatest global challenges the world has ever faced. How effectively businesses, governments and communities work together to meet established international commitments will determine the future of our planet.”
World Economic Forum
Supporting effective collaboration for climate action is a key strategic focus of our Green Transition work to support a low-carbon, resource-efficient and socially-inclusive economy.
We are developing two workstreams responding to the most urgent partnering support needs in climate action
Major individual climate partnership and direct organisational support
We are working to support existing and emerging high potential climate partnerships to be as effective as possible. While many ambitious climate action collaborations have well developed M&E frameworks, fewer pay attention to the quality of the partnership working itself.
Established partnerships benefit from TPI’s support in pausing and reflecting, working with a partnership to design and deliver an independent ‘health check’ review and action plan.
We offer flexible, tailored support to suit individual climate collaborations, ranging from a full partnership ‘health check’ to coaching and mentoring for individual partnership team members.
Scope 3 emissions: effective supply chain collaboration
There is growing focus on value chain (scope 3) emissions as the next frontier in the race to net zero, and businesses increasingly talk of partnerships with suppliers as essential to meeting ambitious climate targets.
Relying solely on conventional procurement techniques to mandate supplier emissions reduction targets risks forcing suppliers to cut corners, tick boxes and, if the barriers to compliance are too high, falling off the roster or continually failing to meet commitments.
A more genuinely collaborative approach is needed to creatively address challenges suppliers face in cutting emissions, providing benefits to all parties. New models of business-value chain and peer-peer collaborations on scope 3 targets are emerging, and TPI is scoping new guidance to support effective supply chain collaborations.
You can read more about our thinking on this in Jenny’s blog for Business Fight’s Poverty.
Future plans
From 2024 we plan to explore a third workstream; supporting effective country-level multi-stakeholder work for climate action.
Past Work: Rapid Partnering for Climate Action
In 2021-2, TPI worked with Partnerships 2030 and climate action practitioners on an inquiry to uncover the primary blockers and enablers in setting up and operating effective climate collaborations.
Climate practitioners identified strong personal relationships as the primary enabler for rapidly convening climate partnerships, alongside the importance of well-respected, senior level champions to ‘bring people along’.
Lack of trust among partners was cited as the primary barrier to rapid climate partnering. Slow internal processes, lack of internal skills on partnering, competition among partners and lack of clarity on goals were also factors slowing progress, as well as disagreements over technical definitions, lack of a common language, bureaucracy and siloes/fragmentation.
Access to fast, flexible funding pots was cited as the key factor that would enable climate partnerships to move faster, alongside support to optimize internal organisational systems to partner well and investing in movement building.
We used the results from the inquiry to sketch out a draft accelerated, ‘rapid-partnering’ protocol- a good practice process that can be readily used by partners setting up a climate collaboration quickly to maximise chances of success.
You can access a recorded summary of results of the inquiry presented at the UN ECOSOC partnership forum in February 2022 here. You can find a one page summary of the event here.
About Partnerships 2030
Partnerships2030 is commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It is a national platform for promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSP). This platform supports the implementation of 2030 Agenda. Involved are the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and Engagement Global – bengo.
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