International kick-off workshop

Bremen, 9 to 11 October 2017. The sixth phase of the 'Municipal Climate Partnerships' project kicked off with an international workshop in Bremen. The workshop was staged by the Service Agency in cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Working Party on Agenda 21 (LAG 21 NRW), with support from the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. The meeting was attended by around 100 participants, who included municipal policy-makers, administrators and civil society actors. It set out to introduce all the participating municipalities to the objectives, the structure, the methodology and the instruments of the project, and to facilitate exchange within the partnerships in order to begin developing the programmes of action. For many participants the workshop was the first opportunity to meet their partners face-to-face. Time was therefore also set aside to allow people to get to know each other and to share ideas and information.

This phase of the project is the first to involve two partner regions simultaneously – Africa and Latin America. It is also the first time that the project had actively put partners from the South in touch with German municipalities wishing to take part. Nine German municipalities and their municipal partners from Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Namibia, Nicaragua, Peru, South Africa and Zimbabwe will now begin developing their joint programmes of action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The workshop was also attended by three German municipalities without their partners from the South, who were prevented from attending by other appointments. It is envisaged that these actors will be inducted into the project at a regional kick-off workshop.

The workshop was opened with welcome addresses by Ulrike Hiller, Under-Secretary of State for Federal and European Affairs of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, Dirk Schwenzfeier, Commissioner for the Private Sector and Local Authorities at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Dr. Jens Kreuter, Managing Director of Engagement Global, and Dr. Klaus Reuter, Managing Director of LAG 21 NRW. After that the climate partnerships taking part in the project introduced themselves. In the afternoon Professor Jörn Birkmann from the University of Stuttgart held a lecture on the main risks of climate change and the options for adapting to it. The project team then provided a presentation on German municipal development cooperation and the project 'Municipal Climate Partnerships'. A discussion with participants from the previous project phases provided the 'newcomers' with insights into other climate partnerships. The day ended with the handover of the Memoranda of Understanding to the participating municipalities at an evening reception held in the Bremen Parliament building.

On day two participants were presented with the manual for designing the joint programmes of action, which they then studied in further depth in smaller groups. Dr. Irit Eguavoen from the Centre for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn then demonstrated options for adapting to climate change, referring to concrete examples in sub-Saharan Africa. This was followed in the afternoon by an excursion to the Klimahaus 8° Ost in Bremerhaven, which illustrates the impacts of climate change through a virtual journey around the world.

On day three of the workshop group work was on the agenda. The municipalities began by identifying potential actors for the climate partnership, and then presented these to their respective partners. In a second session of group work participants identified challenges in their municipalities caused by climate change, as well as strategies and projects for addressing them, and presented these to their partners. The final day also focused on technical details and conditions for the respective climate partnerships, as well as continued cooperation with a particular focus on the next steps for designing the programmes of action.

After the workshop – or immediately before it – the delegations from the African and Latin American municipalities took the opportunity to visit their respective German partner municipalities. For many this was the first visit to the partner municipality. This was therefore a good opportunity for them to gain a better impression of their partner municipality and explore possible topics for joint cooperation.

The kick-off workshop laid the foundation for the climate partnerships of the sixth phase of the project. The next steps will now be to establish the working and communication structures, strengthen the personal relationships between the partners, identify joint areas of action and develop the joint programme of action. The respective partnerships can now agree on a date for their next bilateral meeting – the first of the three expert missions – between November 2017 and February 2018.