Our Annual General Meeting took place on 30-31 May, and here’s a wrap up with some key reflections. We thank everyone who attended and for those members who couldn’t join, we hope you find the wrap up helpful!
This year, the AGM had the following specific objective and theme:
2023 Objective: Establish a shared sense of the progress we’re making against the Strategic Compass’ Impact Goal 1 (Climate: building climate resilient pathways to drive more equitable and effective humanitarian and development outcomes).
2023 Theme: Using context-sensitive nexus approaches: are we delivering meaningful impact for project participants?
AGM 2023 agenda.
Our key reflections
We’ve synthesized all the inputs captured during the 3 AGM sessions, so that both those that participated and those that couldn’t, can tap directly into a digested set of highlights. Read on to find our seven key Alliance2015 AGM insights:
- ACTION NOT WORDS: PROGRESSING NEXUS DELIVERY THROUGH CONCRETE ACTION
Insight: A ‘’good enough’’ strategic common vision, which can make use of identified internal and external complementarities is key to effective nexus thinking and action, and to moving beyond the sense of frustration some people feel. Within Alliance2015, we do not aim to find a common H-D-P definition or position, but we identify good practices and common principles to guide our joint action, by acknowledging and respecting differences, and capitalizing on different expertise and experiences. These experiences also allow us to make use of our operational experiences in our advocacy. Participants stressed continuously the need for flexible funding and the dearth of well-designed quality funding instruments on the donor side (there are some examples, like the German chapeau funding – but the EU, our main advocacy target and key funder, is not in the forefront).
Action: continuously harvesting concrete context-specific case studies and/or stories would be useful to illustrate how the Alliance2015 partners operationalize the nexus in different contexts and a useful tool for joint positioning and joint advocacy with institutional donors.
Action: We need to be able to say what we think alternative funding arrangements could look like; and we have a concrete EU opportunity as we’re at the midpoint of the current 2021-2027 EU Multiannual Financial Framework, so this is the right time to push for changes in the next one.
2. PEACE IN THE NEXUS: OUR MISSING PIECE?
Insight: we can identify that our members have some track record in working on peacebuilding issues at local level through governance, peacebuilding and social cohesion programming. But participants felt our peace and security expertise was patchy and not yet a convincing part of our offer.
Action: we reflected that we might need to associate a peace and security organization to our network, or find more strategic ways to establish relationships and establishing partnerships with peace actors.
3. ADDING ANTICIPATORY ACTION TO OUR NEXUS DELIVERY
Insight: As the evidence on climate impacts piles up, anticipatory action has risen up the agenda of our emergency colleagues, and we hear more and more about it from field-based colleagues. While we have tools to encourage joint emergency preparedness, we are more and more convinced that anticipatory action is an important topic for joint advancement. Focusing on anticipatory action could offer the opportunity to link the different nexus components, and should be locally-driven. In LAC (and perhaps elsewhere), sub-regional linkages may be more meaningful than regional ones.
Action: participants felt again that we should start from concrete cases – for example supporting the LAC subregion which will be most affected by this year’s El Niño to identify what is needed for anticipatory action and how to call for it effectively with local partners.
4. INTENTIONAL QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS IN JOINT CLIMATE PROGRAMMING
Insight: there’s been a huge increase in member programming to build climate resilience and, as ever, we have differing levels and areas of experience and expertise. We’ve learnt that designing, funding and implementing joint climate programming is not easy – setting up the right consortium and partnerships may require external partners, with technical added value and accreditations with climate donors.We’re concerned about ethical standards and how we can contribute to building and enforcing them. For example, we’d like to deepen our knowledge on carbon markets, recognising that carbon credits should catalyze systemic change by realizing energy gains for local communities, not be misused for corporate ”greenwashing”.
Action: proactively look into the opportunity for regional/multi-country and multi-partner climate resilient programming and seek a pro-active and propositional outreach to donors based on our context specific knowledge and experience.
Action: ensure we are accessing and contributing to relevant ethical standards processes, to avoid misuse of off-setting projects and contribute to communities’ wellbeing.
5. MAKE BETTER USE OF OUR DATA AND EVIDENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Insight: investing in systems to collect data and evidence of climate change: enables better programming; creates advantages for local communities that can adapt, prepare and respond; can provide local governments the possibility to work transparently; enables us to use evidence for advocacy initiatives on climate resilience towards donors and other stakeholders. We already have significant data and experience and need to use it more smartly; for example on Loss and Damage, a core issue in our advocacy strategy, we have rich experience from countries like Pakistan which we can better deploy.
Action: mutually improve and build on existing indicators for climate sustainability in programming in order to have clearer evidence to ”sell” and for better programme design.
Action: using our advocacy strategy towards the EU to guide us, backed up with our global crisis narrative with its stock of relevant case studies (which we will keep renewing) we should invest in a limited number of specific, relevant advocacy initiatives during COPs, climate intersessional meetings or regional climate events (e.g. African Climate Weeks) providing local evidence and getting in touch with negotiating country delegations. We need to find smart pathways for using evidence from our field work for advocacy purposes.
6. WHERE ARE OUR LOCAL ACTORS?
Insight: we know that local actors bring along added value through their local knowledge and experience. When gathering data and evidence, members are convinced local actors should be actively involved, together with academia, to ensure transfer of knowledge and tools in the long term. But there’s a worry we are not doing this enough, with several members pointing out the lack of local voices at the AGM and in the Alliance2015 itself, so it feels timely that our next AGM will focus on how we are progressing on our third impact goal on equitable civil society partnerships: contributing to more effective and inclusive local-to-global civil society collaboration.
Action: ensure this issue is at the forefront of AGM 2024 and that we make good on our commitment to proper inclusion of local actors and voices.
7. OUR KNOWLEDGE IS OUR TREASURE, BUT IT SHOULDN’T BE A SECRET TREASURE!
Insight: Creating spaces for interdisciplinary conversations within Alliance2015 and utilizing the network to optimize limited resources by sharing experiences, knowledge, and information is one of the Alliance’s most important and effective purposes. This AGM allowed participants to glimpse into the ‘’treasure trove’’ of what members already know and are doing on the many aspects of climate resilience such as programming, risk assessment, finance and funding, responding to the Loss and Damage agenda, advocacy and more. Internally, the more we make this visible within the network, the best use members can make of it.
Action: Within the network, accessible and engaging induction of member staff is a successful way to keep Alliance2015 on the agenda at every level of the organisation; externally, developing coherent and consistent communication to our target ‘’peers and experts’’ audience, is key to building Alliance2015 visibility and capacity to influence.
What’s next?
The next Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held as a hybrid event (location tbd), kindly co-hosted by our member Concern Worldwide!
The AGM will have the following objective:
Establish a shared sense of the progress we’re making against the Strategic Compass’ Impact Goal 3 (Equitable civil society partnerships: contributing to more effective and inclusive local-to-global civil society collaboration).
Read the full report on our SharePoint.
