ICLEI South Asia, the Asia Regional Coordinator for Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) programme, organised Action Labs in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in the month of April 2019.

The purpose of the Action Labs was to have close engagement with in-country actors at national, regional and city level actors as well as identify Knowledge Brokering Partners (KBPs) that CDKN team will work with over the next year in the target countries. For each of these countries, the Knowledge Brokering Partners were shortlisted on the basis of concept notes submitted as per an Expression of Interest that was shared earlier this year.

The shortlisted partner organisations were invited to these Labs where they presented their proposals and worked with their relevant stakeholders to co-develop a firmer idea on their concept. CDKN Asia shared the full proposal format and discussed in detail the overall programme and its focus, laying particular stress on gender sensitisation of the project ideas.

Based on the discussions, the KBPs in each of these countries will now prepare a final proposal from their concept notes.

The projects are expected to begin by June in this year. Each country witnessed close to 20 participants, who were immensely benefitted from shared learnings and interactive sessions in the action labs.

Besides, ICLEI South Asia, along with the project partners, also launched the project in Nepal, Kathmandu on the 1st of April.

The launch was followed by a panel discussion on CDKN’s journey so far. The thematic focus was on water-food-energy nexus, gender equity and social inclusion, climate finance and cities.

The SouthSouthNorth, Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano, and the Overseas Development Institute are the other supporting partners in the CDKN programme.