View this email in your browser

Newsletter, December

Find out about the Thimpu Ambition Summit, protecting Indigenous lands in Chile, a rubbish dump turned into a producive urban farm and lots more below.

Young people holding placards at a climate change demonstration.

High-level summit and video showcase poorest countries’ spearheading efforts to tackle climate crisis

The Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) represents 46 least developed countries – the 46 poorest nations in the world and home to one billion people. These are the countries that emit less than 1% of global CO2 emissions but are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts.

A new film launched in advance of the 9 December Thimphu Ambition Summit underlines how the LDCs are leading the way when it comes to climate action. Watch the video and register to attend the summit.

Ercilia Araya, leader of the Colla de Pai-Ote community.

Case study

Protecting Indigenous lands: lessons from Chile

Chilean NGO Observatorio Ciudadano is supporting Indigenous People to combine Human Rights Impact Assessments with investment chain mapping to hold international mining companies accountable.

Find out more in the case study.

"Where the big mining companies were extracting [water] there were beautiful plains, large water lagoons, marshes... [Now,] nothing is left [but] pure soil, everything is bare... they are drying up the water tables."

– Segundo Araya Bordones, member of the Colla de Pai-Ote community

Community members from the Mae Kha Canal settlements plant vegetables and fruit trees.

Guest blog by Supawut Boonmahathanakorn

Rubbish dump turned lush urban farm

A new urban farm, springing up on a former garbage dump in Chiang Mai, Thailand has become a lifeline for the area’s urban poor communities.

Read the guest blog.

A woman food vendor puts a dot on a flipchart at a food systems workshop in Al Alto, Bolivia.

Blog by Natalie Lartey

The inconvenient truth about ‘capacity’ strengthening in global development

To work with effective and progressive civil society movements in low-income countries, do international NGOs need to do less capacity strengthening, and work as allies of these movements instead? Drawing on lessons from a new report, Natalie Lartey discusses how advocates can advance this agenda.

Read her new blog.

Guest blog by Gabriel Kpaka

The loss and damage of climate change has pushed Sierra Leoneans far beyond their ability to adapt

Over the last 15 years, residents of Freetown, Sierra Leone have witnessed first-hand the escalating trail of destruction left in the wake of floods, sea rises, mudslides, landslides and more.

Read the blog.

A woman standing in front of a bread making machine.

Blog by Sarah Best

Getting personal: tailoring support to power up Tanzania’s rural businesses

Drawing on new survey findings, Sarah Best discusses how customising support for small and micro businesses in rural Tanzania could unlock productivity.

Read Sarah's blog.

A group of women sitting on blankets discussing a flipchart. They are supporting each other with employment skills in Senegal.

Guest blog by Ibrahima Dia

Can promotion groups help strengthen women’s access and control over land?

In Senegal, women’s ‘promotion groups’ have traditionally been vehicles for helping women share resources, ideas and experiences to increase income. But they are also – somewhat expectedly – enabling women to access and control land, although with limitations.

Guest blogger Ibrahima Dia discusses / lire le blog en français.

Research paper, 40 pages

Small business, big demand: facilitating finance for productive uses of energy in Tanzania

The Energy Change Lab, a joint programme of IIED and Hivos, surveyed 373 rural businesses and farmers — all customers of six energy companies in Tanzania — to understand perceptions and challenges of finance for small businesses and energy for productive uses (PUE). Moving PUE forward will require tailoring and scaling by listening to each communities’ unique challenges and needs and linking more affordable and flexible financing.

Download the report.

Project report, 21 pages

Strengthening capacity for advocacy in food systems of the poor

This paper places capacity strengthening within the context of a development sector where most advocacy is funded and managed by Northern stakeholders. These actors often have their own advocacy agendas to prioritise. And while stakeholders funding advocacy try to align with the needs and interests of Southern civil society organisations and citizens, our experience is that much gets lost in the detail. Based on lessons from Sustainable Diets for All and our reflections on advocacy capacity strengthening and agency, this report makes four key recommendations for donors, international NGOs, civil society organisations and citizen groups.

Download the report.