Talanoa Dialogues in Africa: highlighting the value of multi-level governance for climate action

The ICLEI Africa team has reflected on the main lessons from the Dialogues and settled on five:

1. Coordinated reporting: Subnational governments are already implementing ambitious climate actions, and engagements between national and subnational governments allow these actions to be reported on and profiled for increased uptake.
2. Accessing finance: With additional resources and targeted capacity building, successful projects being implemented at the local scale can be scaled-up and developed into bankable projects that attract international finance.
3. Building local ownership: With the creation of safe spaces for subnational and national government actors to interact, subnational actors can better align their actions to meet national targets, building momentum from the ground up.
4. Identifying capacity strengths and gaps: Coordination and communication, both horizontally between subnational governments and vertically between subnational and national governments, can help multi-scale and multi-sectoral actors build networks and identify technical capacity strengths and gaps that can be built on for implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions.
5. Fostering city-to-city learning: Rich sharing of lessons occurs when cities meet to discuss the barriers and enablers they face when implementing climate action. By enabling such engagements that then contribute to the implementation and revision of a country’s Nationally Determined Contribution, not only leads to a more inclusive and transparent Nationally Determined Contribution, but also avoids similar mistakes being made, and increases the harnessing of good practice.