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On 25 July 2018, the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) convened a meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, to engage civil society in the APRM process. Participants identified 17 primary governance challenges, which were subsequently condensed into a thematic framework for a written submission. Key areas of concern include executive dominance, land access, youth unemployment, institutionalised corruption, and a lack of policy coherence. The IPPR is tasked with driving the drafting process, with a deadline for initial contributions set for the end of August 2018.

The paper argues that while South Africa possesses the necessary legal tools—primarily through the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) and the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA)—to achieve the targets of SDG 12, practical implementation is hindered by systemic failures. These include a lack of political will, administrative inefficiency within the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), and poor inter-departmental coordination. The authors highlight a specific governance risk where the DMR acts as both the awarding authority for environmental authorisations and the body responsible for their implementation, which weakens oversight.

The report evaluates the impact of the APRM, EITI, and OGP, concluding that while these initiatives provide platforms for dialogue and some policy changes, there is little measurable evidence that they consistently drive significant governance reforms. It highlights the challenges of voluntary compliance, the risk of 'open-washing' by governments, and the critical but often tokenistic role of civil society. The document recommends that donors support civil society capacity, invest in impact research, and align funding with MSI action plans to better foster accountability and transparency.

The report analyzes the governance and utilization of Indonesia's Village Fund, finding that while the fund has grown significantly and is a major revenue source for villages, it is predominantly spent on transportation infrastructure. The authors identify five key challenges—including a lack of technical capacity, misaligned planning between village and district levels, and insufficient regulatory guidelines—that hinder the fund's potential to support environmental conservation and sustainable land use. To address these, the report recommends integrating village priorities into district planning, empowering the Village and Community Empowerment Office, creating specific sustainability guidelines, adopting a 'negative-list' for spending, and introducing a sustainability variable into the fund's allocation formula.

Saint Lucia has implemented a 10-year National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process, led by the Department of Sustainable Development, to build resilience against climate change. The plan identifies eight priority sectors for adaptation—Tourism, Water, Agriculture, Fisheries, Education, Health, Infrastructure & spatial planning, and Natural resource management—and utilizes Sectoral Adaptation Strategies & Action Plans (SASAPs) to implement measures. The process includes several supporting tools, such as a Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Report and a Monitoring & Evaluation Plan. Observed and anticipated climate impacts for the country include tropical storms, high-intensity hurricanes, sea level rise, coral bleaching, and prolonged droughts.

The document analyzes Codelco, Chile's state-owned copper producer, highlighting its role as a primary source of government revenue and the consequences of prioritizing state transfers over capital reinvestment. While Codelco has contributed over USD 100 billion to national development since 1971, chronic underinvestment led to stagnating production and obsolete infrastructure. The study details the transition from full nationalization in 1971 to a mixed model allowing private joint ventures from 1992, and the 2010 governance reforms aimed at decoupling the company from political cycles to ensure its long-term viability.

The strategy provides a blueprint for the Government of Saint Lucia to use purposeful communication to foster a whole-of-government approach to climate adaptation. It focuses on translating technical climate science into meaningful narratives for diverse stakeholders, including political leaders, farmers, fishers, and youth. The framework emphasizes the use of a mix of traditional media (television, radio) and digital platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp) to drive behavioral change and secure investment for adaptation measures across priority sectors such as tourism, agriculture, and water.

The guidelines outline a four-phase process for creating SASAPs to enhance climate resilience across key sectors in Saint Lucia. The process involves stocktaking, stakeholder validation, the prioritisation of adaptation measures using a weighted 12-criteria scoring tool, and the development of project concept notes to attract international funding. The guide is based on the 2017-2018 experience of developing SASAPs for the water, agriculture, and fisheries sectors.

The report outlines a strategic framework for Saint Lucia to integrate climate change adaptation into national planning over a decade. It defines a four-element roadmap (laying groundwork, preparatory elements, implementation strategies, and monitoring), identifies critical capacity gaps across policy, organizational, and operational levels, and proposes specific training activities to address these weaknesses. The plan prioritizes eight key sectors, including water, agriculture, and health, and lists numerous policy entry points for adaptation integration.

The document discusses the emergence of 36 agricultural growth poles and 9 corridors across 23 African countries, covering 3.5 million hectares. It argues that while these initiatives aim to attract private investment and drive economic transformation, they require strong regulatory frameworks to avoid exacerbating inequalities or depleting natural resources.

The paper examines the governance of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, arguing that while integrated approaches are essential for climate compatible development, they are often hindered by siloed government structures, political contestation over mandates, and limited local capacity. Using evidence from Indonesia, Kenya, and the Amazon basin, it highlights that horizontal and vertical coordination are critical but can be undermined by power imbalances between central and local governments. The author suggests a pragmatic approach to nexus governance, focusing on strengthening the technical and administrative capacities of local government institutions rather than striving for an impractical ideal of total comprehensiveness.

The document argues that gender inequality and unequal power relations frequently exclude women from environmental decision-making and the benefits of development programmes. It emphasizes that gender intersects with other vulnerabilities, such as disability and class, and calls for the integration of disaggregated gender data into technical models and climate finance to ensure equitable outcomes in the energy transition and natural resource management.

The report reveals a systemic imbalance where community land formalization is burdensome, costly, and slow, while company land acquisition is relatively fast and flexible. It argues that this 'uneven playing field' threatens the livelihoods of 2.5 billion people and increases environmental risks, recommending reforms to make community procedures more accessible and transparent.

The document introduces agent-based modelling (ABM) as a bottom-up approach to study complex social and environmental systems by simulating the interactions of autonomous agents. It argues that ABM is particularly useful for problems involving decentralized interactions and non-linear dynamics where traditional top-down models fail. The authors highlight ABM's potential as a stakeholder engagement tool and its ability to be integrated with qualitative and quantitative methods like GIS and social network analysis. Four case studies are presented: disaster resilience in Turkey, agroforestry adaptation in Cameroon, biodiesel transitions in Malaysia, and artisanal fisheries management in Kenya.

This research paper by the Climate Policy Initiative examines barriers to agricultural productivity and natural resource management in Mozambique. It identifies bureaucratic delays in tax and trade administration, limited access to credit for small farmers, and gaps in energy and irrigation infrastructure as primary obstacles. The authors propose low-cost policy modifications, including streamlining government administration, developing public-private partnerships, prioritizing key infrastructure, and increasing revenue-sharing mechanisms for community-led natural resource protection.

Mozambique possesses high agricultural potential but remains a net food importer due to low productivity and high climate vulnerability. The report identifies four primary areas for improvement: simplifying bureaucratic tax administration to reduce investment costs, developing public financial incentives and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to mitigate risk for farmers, prioritizing critical infrastructure in energy and irrigation, and enhancing revenue-sharing mechanisms to protect natural resources. It highlights that administrative delays and high interest rates (often over 20%) are more significant barriers than tax rates themselves. The document also emphasizes the need for better community consultation in PPPs and the implementation of a more transparent fiscal rule for sharing extractive industry royalties with local communities.

The document examines how conservation policies are used to forcibly evict indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, often masking commercial interests. It highlights the disproportionate impact on women and children and provides case studies from India's Panna Tiger Reserve and Kenya's Embobut Forest to illustrate human rights violations and the failure of top-down conservation models.

The proposal seeks USD 20,546,756 in grant financing to implement Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) across 10,000 hectares in The Gambia. The project aims to restore degraded forests, savannas, and agricultural landscapes to increase the supply of climate-resilient natural resources and establish community-managed businesses. It targets 11,550 direct beneficiaries, with a focus on women, and intends to integrate EbA into national policies and local land-use planning to catalyze a paradigm shift toward a green economy.

The document examines a long-standing boundary dispute between Malawi and Tanzania, which escalated in 2012 due to the discovery of potential oil reserves. It analyzes the failure of formal legal mechanisms, such as the SADC Tribunal, and the limitations of current preventive diplomacy tools within SADC and the African Union, arguing that a lack of political will and funding hampers regional conflict resolution.

The Migration and Conservation Toolkit is designed to help practitioners integrate migration dynamics into conservation interventions to prevent the exacerbation of social tensions and institutional failures that threaten ecosystems. Developed using research from the Great Lakes region of Africa, the toolkit serves as a non-prescriptive roadmap for designing activities sensitive to how migration affects natural resource use and livelihoods in host communities. Specifically, in the Bale Mountains ecosystem, migration is identified as a significant driver of land conversion and the overexploitation of natural resources.