Lesson Learned
Posted on August 31, 2021 by Lillian Holmes
Authoring Organizations: | CEO Water Mandate |
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Consulting Organizations: | Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) |
Universal: | No |
Applicable Phases: | Commit |
Last Updated | Oct 4, 2024 |
Partnerships that span multiple actors and sectors will necessarily span a variety of organizational competencies. As the partnership determines its goals and structure, assess both the skills needed to achieve those goals and the skills of the existing partners. Ensure that the structure of the partnership caters to each partner’s strengths.
The Coalición Agua para Colombia is an initiative to improve climate change resilience and water security in Colombia by inspiring collective action, promoting better corporate water sustainability practices, and strengthening the water funds to protect the water security of cities. The initiative has many partners spanning the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. It is divided into several work areas composed of multiple partners. Each work area benefits from the respective partners’ strengths.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a global nonprofit conservation organization, serves as technical secretariat due to the organization’s expertise in nature-based solutions. The promoting group includes many partners from different sectors who speak to the need to act collectively to improve Colombia’s water security, publicizing the initiative and carrying out its work under four work tables.
The initiative has also identified several champion organizations and agencies to broaden its visibility, including the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development and Andesco, a non-profit guild association of companies in the utilities and communications sector. Within this partner ecosystem, the UN Global Compact Local Network Colombia (UNGC Colombia) was able to make a key intervention by leveraging its network of businesses to assess circular water management best practice in Colombia and share their findings with the partnership.
UNGC Colombia’s contribution was enabled by the partnership’s choice to base each partner’s contributions on their unique strength, with UNGC Colombia bringing its business knowledge, TNC contributing technical knowledge and governance, the champions expanding the Coalición’s reach, and the members of the promoting group contributing work under the partnership’s four work tables.
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This lesson learned reflects the beliefs and experiences of the author, not necessarily the Pacific Institute, CEO Water Mandate, or UN Global Compact.