Diplomacy and Sustainability Actors Forging New Alliances | Umweltbundesamt

The TES Academy together with the Global Diplomacy Lab (GDL) and the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) have come together to explore barriers, challenges, and incentives for international collaboration in sustainability discourses working on real cases.

The divergence of global actors coupled with multiple crises and conflicts increasingly undermine collaboration and cooperation around environmental protection, sustainability and prosperity measures. We believe that actors at the intersection of sustainability and diplomacy, from different regions of the world and with their diverse perspectives and mindsets, can create new patterns of dialogue and alliances, and support international activities to rebuild trust and cooperation to ensure a strong global sustainability policy. 20 sustainability and diplomacy experts from the GDL and CIPSEM networks coming from Africa, Asia and Latin America will present their recommendations in October 2024 at the Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC), and discuss them with additional actors as an enlarged “accelerator group”.

It is planned to facilitate a dialogue process lasting several months prior to the HSC. The results will be presented during the workshop at the HSC and deepened with additional partners from the Global North. The whole process will rely on the collective intelligence and experience of the participants, focusing on methods of mutual transformative learning that go beyond the classic "presentation and discussion" mode. The approach aims to recognise differences in understanding, perspectives and needs, as well as to better understand local realities in different regions of the world and their global references. The participants will work on real sustainability cases, that they propose. These cases will have a local relevance and reflect the challenges of the uncertain world. Previously unseen stakeholders and their interests and influences, "blind spots" and nexuses will be identified, revealing alternative starting points for subsequent concrete actions.

For further information, please contact us at tes-academy [at] uba [dot] de.