3GF Africa Regional Conference 2015 Partnership Market Place Prosperous Futures – Green Economies in Africa When: Where: Speaker(s): Wednesday, 13 May, 17:00-18:30 Tent in the fountain area Kookie Habtegaber, Global Green Economy Lead, WWF, [email protected] Jackson Kiplagat, Governanace Coord/ Interim Policy and Reserach Lead – Africa, WWF, [email protected] Christine Tam, Sustainable Trade and Investment Coordinator, WWF, [email protected] What is the green growth challenge you are trying to overcome? What are the key barriers to change? Re-directing financial flows for the transition towards green economies. Challenge: How do we ensure that decision making in ongoing and new investments in extractives, infrastructure, agriculture and urban development embeds environmental and social sustainability criteria and how do we develop, scale up and disseminate best practice tools and case studies? • Strengthening environmental aspects of good governance in natural resource management is essential to ensure sustainable and equitable economic growth. How do we ensure that we develop an integrated natural resources management and natural capital valuation within national development plans and in particular economic corridors? • Given the urbanization trend and resulting infrastructure development, finding successful financing tools that favor and promote environmental sustainability for cities, towns and local authorities will have a long lasting positive impact. WWF has produced a global study looking at the extent to which existing infrastructure financing tools could be applied to finance sustainable infrastructure. The next stage is to take some of these tools and apply them on the ground. Through piloting and partnering, WWF hopes to demonstrate the various opportunities that are available in financing green economies and hopefully spur further innovation. Working at scale: Platform for strategic engagement with the private sector Challenge: How to leverage economies of scale; avoid uncoordinated action among, between and within sectors; shorttermism and weak governance? Looking to build platforms to • Work together to deliver sustainable production of commodities • Accelerate the transitioning to renewable sources energy • Understand eco-system services and integrating their value into the cost/benefit analysis of projects and investments What is your partnership approach / hypothesis? WWF has a long history of championing multi-stakeholder partnerships. Our partnership approach is to find a common agenda so that government, private sector, and civil society work together to create win-win-win situations. WWF’s partnership efforts are predicated on WWF’s one planet perspective and focus on: • promoting better production and responsible sourcing of raw materials that drive deforestation / unsustainable use of water; • encouraging a switch to 100 per cent renewable energy and away from fossil fuels; • engaging jointly on public policy; • supporting the equitable sharing of natural resources; • redirecting financial flows to support conservation and sustainable ecosystem management; • raising awareness of the need to consume more wisely; and • protecting some of the world’s most ecologically important places. For business partnerships, WWF’s partnership approach is working with those who have the greatest potential to reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth and together find solutions to conservation challenges such as deforestation, over-fishing, water scarcity and climate change. WWF utilizes three types of partnerships with companies: 1. 2. 3. Driving sustainable business practices; Communications and awareness raising; and Philanthropic partnerships. Many partnerships use a combination of these three approaches. WWF has long-standing engagement with the public sector, including public sector finance institutions (PSPs) and multilaterals. These partnerships exist at the national, regional and multilateral levels. Globally, WWF has over 34 partnerships with PSPs and multilaterals. Being represented in over 100 countries, WWF maintains healthy partnerships with many governments and ministries across the world. For public sector finance institutions, WWF advocates an increase in overall public financing available for the environment, in particular, to foster conservation; mainstreaming environmental concerns into institutional frameworks and investments by integrating environmental standards into development policies and practice, and catalyzing linkages between relevant actors. In Africa WWF works in the following countries: Uganda, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, DRC, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, South Africa and an associate in Nigeria. Who are the partners involved and how? Who are the other stakeholders? WWF works across a range of stakeholders and partners. These include: governments, citizens, civil society, multilaterals, UN entities, businesses and financiers. What are your partnership objectives and what achievements have there been to date? Africa is changing rapidly and the socioeconomic transformation that is happening is unprecedented. This transformation and the development pathways that African countries are forging today will determine the future outcomes of tomorrow. At the same time, the African continent still has a substantial part of its biodiversity and natural capital intact. WWF aims to ensure the foundation for the ongoing transformation supports an inclusive and ecologically safe pathway for Africa. Objective 1: Forging the best development pathway for Africa by making sure their economic, social and ecological futures are in sync and aligned. a. Achievements: In partnership with AfDB, WWF has developed the first Ecological Futures scenario report that will be launched during the upcoming AfDB Annual meeting in later this month. b. WWF in collaboration with other multilaterals is working with various governments on their green economy plans and investment guidelines (e.g. include Mozambique’s green economy action plan, Kenyan Investment Center, Tanzania Private Sector Foundation, and Tanzania Chamber of Minerals and Energy to develop and implement investment guidelines (general “green” as well as sector-based). c. WWF is the only environmental NGOs engaging with the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meetings on the inclusion of environmentally sustainable investments between China and Africa. Objective 2: Creating a collaborative platform so as to leverage business engagement at sectoral/regional/cross boundary level and thereby building economies of scale. a. Achievements: WWF has several successful projects that have delivered with corporate partners. Today, it wants to scale up and replicate these successful cases across Africa. What is the potential of this partnership to achieve impact and scale? There is huge potential to mobilize stakeholders across Africa to figure out what major trends and trade-offs mean to them, what they want to see happen, and how they can collectively work together to accomplish common goals, address key risks, and identify major opportunities forward by making sure they benefit from lessons learned and leapfrog into new ways of economic development. 2