LocationsDeep Collaboration: Why it’s needed for Resilient Food Systems
November 25, 2024
How can we channel collaboration in a contained, nurturing way?
As the world approaches the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, the pressure grows for increased effort to achieve the targets, with improved collaboration often identified as the key enabling force. Governments, civil society and private sector have realized that they cannot change systems acting on their own – they need to collaborate for effective results.
The ground-breaking Pact for the Future that emerged from the UN Summit of the Future calls for collaboration 10 times. In food systems, the increasing demand to transition to regenerative agriculture will require donors to boost their support for collaboration. However, the skills and experience to collaborate constructively and effectively are sorely lacking in a world where competition and maximizing individual advantage have been celebrated for decades. UNDP is changing this with its focus on “Deep Collaboration” as the key to the system change we need.
* Deep Collaboration for Deep Change. https://nascee.org.za/resources/nascee-and-ipasa_deep-collaboration-for-deep-change.pdf
In the race to build resilient food systems, much expectation is placed on technological and financial innovations - the “what” of change. However, UNDP’s experience over more than 15 years is that the “who” of change – the people involved and their organisations – are key to whether food system change succeeds. Collaboration amongst stakeholders is at the heart of every system change; in fact, collaboration has defined humanity’s evolution across history.
Yet we know that collaborating is not always easy or straightforward, particularly in complex spaces like food systems with multiple agendas, deeply entrenched power dynamics, global interdependencies and high political, social, and economic stakes.
Hence, for change to happen, we cannot just talk about collaboration, we need to find ways of being that equip us in doing collaboration more effectively. But what does this look like in practice?
Systems typically transform at three scales - the global level; the national or regional; and the individual level. All three need to transform in synchrony to bring the change that we need, and each needs to see a benefit for its effort.
Donor contributions to systems transformation have been significant, but often focused on changing the system at the global or national/regional levels. What we have learned in our vast experience supporting multistakeholder collaboration and systems change in food and agricultural commodity systems across the world is that systems transformation can only happen if resources and efforts are devoted to bringing change to every one of these scales and crucially to integrating and connecting them in a consistent, cohesive way.
Concretely, this means that we ought to collaborate towards:
Advocating for a global paradigm shift and recreate a new system which can only be done through collective co-creation and shared vision.
Translating the paradigm shift and the new system into concrete policies, action plans and strategies at national and subnational levels that can give life to a new model on the ground.
Equipping individuals with strong systems thinking, leadership and collaborative capacities to firstly, be able to envision a new future and take it forth to action, and secondly to be capable of working with the other actors in the system, in the full, embodied understanding that no single person or organization can hold the breadth and depth of change that is required. We need to equip changemakers to understand how we as individuals can be in service of a wider and bigger purpose beyond our own selves.
Developing and sustaining collaborative spaces where the work on integrating and connecting the global, national and regional, and where critical actors can come together to build trust, leadership, and the individual and group capacities required to sustain collective visioning and action over time.
Both the individual scale and the work of integrating and connecting are often underestimated when it comes to resource allocation and effort expended. As a result, individual changemakers in the system feel left behind by the pace of change; policies and actions taken at national and subnational level are fragmented, siloed; efforts duplicated, resources inefficiently used. Practitioners, institutions and donors experience a great deal of frustration from not seeing the impact and results they expect, amidst significant investment and an immense amount of human effort devoted.
This is where deep collaboration becomes crucial. It is the water that reaches every corner and permeates though every crack in the system. Yet, just like water, the flow of collaboration needs to be properly channelled to nurture rather than overflow.
In our experience, successful collaboration feels like floating downstream on a free-flowing river with good riverbanks that channel the flow. Without these, the river floods and the flow becomes sluggish and directionless.
What this analogy illustrates is that our experience has shown us that in “doing” deep collaboration, it is important to sensitively contain the process, like a riverbank, so that it is guided and structured whilst remaining agile and responsive to what emerges in the moment. Careful facilitation and a method to guide the planning, thinking and acting have proven to be key success factors in “holding the space” for deep collaboration to emerge.
UNDP’s Effective Collaborative Action approach is an invitation to bring that much needed method and structure to the being and doing of “Deep Collaboration”, offering practical ways of cradling stakeholders and practitioners through building a collaborative space and collaborative capacities in a sustained, meaningful way.
Launched in 2021 and funded by the Global Environment Facility and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the work is inspired by SECO collaboration initiatives in Peru and Indonesia, that first started in 2015. SECO is now supporting the implementation of Effective Collaborative Action approaches in its Sustainable Landscape Program Indonesia (SLPI) Palm Oil landscapes and in Green Commodities Programme, phase III, that also works with cocoa in Ghana, palm oil in Malaysia and cattle and soy in Brazil. In this way SECO is blazing a trail as a leading donor in this area. UNDP’s collaborative approaches have also been used in other sectors and countries around the world, including cashmere in Mongolia; collaboration across commodities in Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea; and facilitating dialogues on deforestation in Cote D’Ivoire and Liberia.
This experience informed ECA’s foundation – four Building Blocks which run in a cycle:
For deep collaboration to happen, the aspect of “being” is just as important; and by “being” we refer to the human dynamics, values and mindset of the people involved, which shape how participants “show up” to the process and put into action the things they learn and agree in the “doing” through the four Building Blocks. Effective Collaborative Action also works on these soft, relational aspects interweaving them with the technical “doing”, in every step of the process.
Our experience is that collaboration is often blocked by the visible factor of participants’ lack of confidence in how to collaborate, and less visible - yet strong forces - like power dynamics that get in the way of systems change. Working through these with Deep Collaboration is a combination of skill, artistry and experience – a close parallel with regenerative agriculture. UNDP’s team has delivered Effective Collaborative Action workshops globally, putting innovative frameworks and facilitation skills in service of every stakeholder in the room, enabling safety and trust as a way of preparing the soil for collaboration to grow and change to happen.
Donors looking to evolve the balance of their support for the three levels of systems transformation will find UNDP is well-equipped to bring unique value in design, facilitation of multi-stakeholder spaces and capacity building to policy and change makers in collaboration and systems change. UNDP has a global network of technical and policy experts, more than 170 Country Offices with a deep understanding of national needs, a wealth of experience in making deep collaboration happen on the ground, strengthened by C3 – Collaboration for Complex Challenges – a joint initiative between UNDP, FAO, UNEP and Wageningen University. C3 will be launching a Fellowship in 2025 in two pilot countries, convening leaders and champions of more collaborative approaches. The Country Fellows will come together through 12-month Collaboration Labs, focusing in the first cycle on strengthening collaboration on food-biodiversity-climate nexus challenges.
Initiatives such as the Conscious Food Systems Alliance concentrate on individual mindfulness and consciousness. UNDP’s role as SDG Integrator adds integration and connection expertise to the mix. As demand grows for Deep Collaboration, UNDP stands ready with the learning programmes, methodology and experience to ensure that the calls for resilient food systems are met with the right mindsets, capabilities and tools.
Case studies and Indonesia and Peru Impact Briefs are available to showcase the most prominent stories that support our longstanding work, built upon the learnings gathered through successes and bumps on the road. We remain constant, humble learners in this path towards recreating a new way of being and doing that are in service of people and planet, yet with the clarity of asserting that change can only happen if we are able to navigate through the ever changing waters of our unsustainable systems united as a collective, setting the right riverbanks to channel the flow of our efforts, resources and passion towards a co-created future where we can all flourish. Collaboration is how we can make it happen.
“Systems don’t change systems, people change systems.”Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator
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