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Vertical Integration and Learning for Low Emission Development in Africa and Southeast Asia (V-LED)

The Vertical Integration and Learning for Low Emission Development project aims to strengthen policy coordination and mutual learning to support LED in Kenya, S. Africa, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Jeffrey Chow

Introduction

As powerful drivers for climate action throughout the world, cities and sub-national authorities are important actors: they translate national targets into action and have thus far demonstrated encouraging results. However, in spite of national climate and green growth targets being in place, very few countries have to date been able to establish dynamic vertical coordination mechanisms between the national and sub-national levels.

Through this project, adelphi and its partners are supporting the governments of Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam and the Philippines to further tap into this potential by strengthening policy coordination processes and learning networks between local actors.

adelphi is leading this four-year project, launched in June 2015, along with an international consortium of key organisations driving local action on the political agenda: UN Habitat, One World, Sustainable Energy Africa and the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) as part of its International Climate Initiative (IKI).

[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uQYqTedgMk]

Video: Interview with Titus Wamae from ILEG about V-LED in Kenya

Methods and Approach

To move towards more coordinated climate action V-LED want to:

  • Build capacities: V-LED are developing a series of toolkits to stimulate local climate action and training packages for municipal authorities.
  • Foster dialogue: V-LED organise networking and exchange spaces for different actors to exchange on their achievements and challenge.
  • Find out what works: VLED are carrying out analytical research on how multi-level governance stimulates climate action in the four countries.

Vertical dialogues

National governments cannot do it alone – let’s talk!

At the Paris UN Climate Conference, national governments throughout the world have committed to substantive greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030 and beyond. However, national governments cannot achieve these targets by themselves. Most have robust climate change and green growth strategies, many have developed plans of action but few have achieved to systematically link activities on the ground to national policies and vice versa. V-LED want to stimulate this “vertical” process through a series of thematic dialogues with different national departments, construction companies, neighbourhood associations and whoever is interested in presenting their voice. The themes of these dialogues will span from renewable energy and energy efficiency, waste disposal, city planning and in general the potential of subnational actors to contribute to national emission reduction targets. We will organise eight vertical dialogues in every country.

Horizontal exchanges

Good practice workshops, lessons learned workshops and regional conferences

Much has already been done. Cities and municipalities, provinces and counties, individuals and organisations are spending time and energy to act locally and advocate (inter)nationally actions to switch to sustainable development pathways. V-LED want to offer a space to exchange on these ideas, spread the good ones, learn from the ones that have failed and get motivated to try again. V-LED will organise 5 good practice workshops in each country aligned with our capacity development package so that learning can be applied and exchanged. This process will culminate in a national lesson learned workshop in 2018 and two regional conference, one for Asia and one for Africa.

Capacity Development

Toolkits to mainstream climate in local planning and series of trainings

Low emission development? Climate mitigation? Green growth? Learning more about it…

Each of the target countries has toolkits and manuals dealing broadly with climate change and green growth, but each national political partner also asked for them to be revised and/or institutionalised within the national system.

This capacity building package will focus on developing sound training material based on existing products with national training institutes or complementing existing ones.

V-LED will train a pool of trainers who will in turn build the capacity of 50 to 150 people in each country throughout the three years. Depending on the needs, the training products will include technical and policy-orientated material on climate mitigation, climate finance, risk and climate, green growth at subnational level, and low emission energies, building and waste management. It will also provide training on “soft skills”, to stimulate learning and the management of knowledge and change processes.

Research

How can multi-level governance stimulate climate action at the local level?

During the four years of implementation, spaces will be opened through about 50 vertical and horizontal exchange workshops in the four target countries and more than 250 people will be trained. What a rich and diverse ground to conduct applied research! A systematic data collection during the events coupled with analytical research on multi-level governance for climate action will engage adelphi team in this research package. A virtual advisory group of internationally active climate actors will steer the process of developing four individual country studies, a comparative cross-country study alongside scientific articles on exceptional findings.

What is V-LED doing?

Outcomes and Impacts

Project outputs will be listed here in due course.

You can find an overview of new publications and online knowledge resources that deal with climate action and low emission development strategies in the Resources section of the V-LED project website.

In this area, you will also find all V-LED project reports and outputs and our latest videos.

Related resources

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