ASEAN Climate Leadership Programme: The Role of Land Management for Food Security and Climate Change 2020

Rationale

The Climate Smart Land Use in ASEAN (CSLU) project aims to strengthen cooperation within and between ASEAN Member States (AMS) for promoting climate-smart land use in the ASEAN region. It supports designing and implementing regional and national policies that promote integrated solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation, increase human wellbeing, enhance food security and that consider different functions a landscape can provide. To achieve this, policy processes need to go beyond individual sectors and interests but rather have to be set up in a dynamic, inclusive and cross-sectoral manner.

However, cooperation across different sectors, stakeholder groups and levels of society is often difficult to realise. Barriers include lack of political mandates, incentives and resources, conflicting interests, staff turnover, and limited technical and methodological knowledge.

To initiate and facilitate complex change processes, foster cooperation and promote systems thinking, competent and motivated individuals (change agents) in key positions and with strong networks are needed that not only possess relevant technical knowledge, but have the motivation and the skills to engage beyond their immediate work area and inspire others to collaborate.

ASEAN context

ASEAN recognises the importance of food security as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected on the regional level in various strategic documents, such as the Vision and Strategic Plan (SP) for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (FAF) (2016-2025), the ASEAN Strategic Plan for the Environment (ASPEN) 2016-2025 or the ASEAN Framework Action Plan on Rural Development and Poverty Eradication 2016-2020. On the national level all ASEAN member states (AMS) have signed the Paris Agreement and communicated their Nationally Determined contributions (NDCs).

CSLU's regional Leadership Course Land use management for food security and climate impacts aims at supporting the implementation of the SP FAF 2016-2025 as well as other ASEAN frameworks related to climate change and land use and contributing to achieving the countries' NDCs. An overview of linkages between the Leadership Course and selected ASEAN strategies, plans and frameworks is presented in Annex I.

The course is designed as a contribution to the work of the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network (ASEAN-CRN). Via the ASEAN-CRN information on the application process will be disseminated, results of the programme reported to ASEAN bodies and selected network members could act as resource persons throughout the course and / or multipliers for lessons learnt and ideas generated.

The CSLU project seeks to develop and implement this Leadership Course jointly with other supporters of the ASEAN-CRN and is currently coordinating with selected development agencies and research, and capacity building institutions in this regard.

Approach

With the implementation of this regional leadership course, the project Climate Smart Land Use in ASEAN (CSLU) aims to strengthen key leadership¹ skills for initiating and facilitating change processes and collective cross-sectoral transformative actions in the field of climate-smart land use. The programme is designed as a Leadership Journey.

Leadership Journeys are part of a quest towards global transformation and more sustainable economies and societies. They encourage the participants to reflect on both, tangible structures such as institutions, politics and material realities, as well as the inner world of values, world views, cultural frames, narratives and habitual routines of the self and society in order to facilitate change and social innovation. Participants learn to look at issues from a systemic perspective and also become more aware of their own role in the system around them.

The course addresses leadership not as a stand-alone function but in the context of a specific challenge. During this Leadership Journey all activities will be focused on strengthening ASEAN policy processes (horizontal impact) and improving the interaction between regional and national policy processes (vertical impact) for promoting land use management that enhances food security and amplifies climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes. The course is based on peer-to-peer exchange, facilitated by experienced coaches who are experts on leadership and change theory and by resources persons with technical knowledge on land use and climate change.

The programme is based on leadership and innovation lab approaches that have been successfully applied by GIZ for a number of topics and contents. ^{2 3} It emphasises the importance of the learning process which continues outside of the modules.

Goals

Overarching

Strengthening participants' competencies and their commitment to design more effective ASEAN policies and action programmes and to facilitate their national level implementation in order to promote climate-friendly and resilient land use management contributing to food security in the region.

Specific

1. Increase understanding of the challenges and potentials of climate-smart land use approaches for food security sustainable development in ASEAN as a region and within AMS
2. Encourage cross-sectoral collaboration and new forms of cooperation for tackling complex challenges in the field
3. Integrate diverse interests into regional and national policy dialogue, support a better understanding of different perspectives and make use of the opportunities this provides
4. Foster a regional network of change agents built on trustful relationships that continues to cooperate outside the realm of the programme
5. Provide inputs to regional and national discourses on climate-smart land use

Outputs on different levels

Target group

Key success factor is the right selection of participants. Great care will be taken to select teams of participants, focusing on mandate, influence and diversity:

• Professionals with some leadership and change experience, with approx. 5-10 years of work experience, typically middle management level or senior technical staff.
  • Potential of acting as change agents: having or heading towards key positions, professional reputation, activity in professional and change networks
  • Motivation to advance change issues within their sphere of influence
• Ideally three representatives per AMS:
  • 1 representative each from 2 different national policy-making bodies (ministries or their agencies) dealing with agriculture, forestry, environment or rural development
  • 1 representative of a relevant civil society organisation, academia or the private sector
• Senior decisions makers of the government institutions represented and further ASEAN stakeholders will be involved at selected stages throughout the process
• Application process using selection criteria, e.g. field of work, position, experience, language skills, motivation letter, gender balance…
• Participants need to sign an agreement document, that clearly communicates the relationship between the organiser and the participants (responsibilities of each, contributions etc.) and have to provide a support letter of their respective supervisor to participate in the programme

Programme

• Duration: 3 months
• Mix of elements with workshops (in-presence or virtual), other virtual exchange formats and reflection time at home
  • 2 workshops of about 3-5 days each; depending on the development of the COVID-19 pandemic workshops will be virtual or in-presence in a selected AMS
  • Virtual exchange formats (e.g. webinars, virtual meetings)
  • Transfer tasks, reflection time and further work on projects (home-based)
  • Peer and individual coaching
  • Optional (depending on CVOD-19 situation): field trips to learning sights in conjunction with workshops
• All participants have to work on a collective action initiative (prototyping or further developing existing project)

Support

• Course offered free of charge by GIZ and other potential partners
• Throughout the programme, the participants will benefit from the guidance of experienced leadership experts, technical experts and their peers.
• For government representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam, and civil society representatives or academia from all countries, GIZ will offer to reimburse transportation costs for self-organised field trips (submission of receipts/evidence is required), including a daily subsistence allowance.
• Government participants from Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand are encouraged to seek support from their organisation or other sources. Support for the above-mentioned items through the organisers may be possible upon request.

Program Structure

• Download the ASEAN Climate Leadership Programme (ACLP) - Booklet 2020

Annex I – Overview of linkages between the leadership programme and selected ASEAN strategies, plans and frameworks

1. SP for FAF 2016-2025

2. ASEAN Strategic Plan on Environment (ASPEN) 2016-20255

3. ASEAN Framework Action Plan on Rural Development and Poverty Eradication 2016-2020

4. Action Plan 2019 of the ASEAN-CRN