UNDP Guatemala Accelerator Lab

Fomenting resilience to climate change hand in hand with society and public institutions.

The UNDP Guatemala Accelerator Lab launched in January 2021 with the challenge of “how to build resilience to climate change by improving collaboration among institutions and civil society.” We are promoting unusual local and international collaborations, including the for Tomorrow platform. One of the main approaches has been the understanding of solid waste management systems, while acknowledging spontaneous dynamics that have emerged through social observation and urban anthropology. We launched innovation events as part of the strategies developed with the Honeybee Network. As a result, we have improved informal waste collectors' working conditions, generating greater value for waste recovery through co-designing collection compartments. These prototypes are contributing to the restoration of the quality of our ravines, and consequently, basins such as the Motagua River. We use three types of experiments, including iterations of trials and errors, analytical assessments with available data, and randomized control trials, incorporating collective intelligence, Data Powered Positive Deviance (DPPD), social network analysis, geographic information system mapping (GIS) and agent-based modeling. The Lab is now expanding through a network of volunteer organizations.