Q1 - The first Global Conference on Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels, organised by Colombia and the Netherlands, in Santa Marta late last month convened nearly 60 countries, as well as activists, Indigenous peoples, governments, the private and public sectors and academia. The aim of this historic event was to build a “coalition of the willing” driving action for fossil fuel phase-out beyond the UN climate process.
Climate Strategies was proud to have co-hosted the academic pre-conference: the Global Science & Policy Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. Serving as the academic chapter to the political conference, the event brought together researchers, policymakers, civil society and other stakeholders to advance policy-relevant research on both the demand- and supply-side transition away from fossil fuels.
Good live discussion on zoom about starting with incentives, starting with the problem. I like to look where problems and solutions intersect in the marketplace of ideas, and further where they intersect with a moment of decision or opportunity.
A1: On question 1, one thing I have been thinking about a lot is not something I’m at all involved in, but just something I’ve been watching very closely. This is also perhaps a bit out of the box for this group, partially because it’s not something that attracts major corporations and also partially because we’re here to talk about how the social impact sector can use AI. However, I will cite this as an example of how different community groups and sectors of society are cooperating across very sharp political divides in the US, as well as in other countries. That is, I increasingly see communities asking hard questions about the construction of new hyperscale data centers, often leading to unlikely partnerships among community groups, small businesses, environmental leaders and political leaders of different stripes. Regardless of where you stand on the specific issue, this ability to work across divides, find common ground and force critical conversations (and potentially advance legislation) is critical for democratic processes.
·On Question One One of the best examples of a business NGO partnership I have seen is between Nestlé and the Fair Labor Association. This came out of a challenging situation whereby the company knew that it had significant risk of child labour in its cocoa supply chains but did not have the capacity to monitor in depth. FLA helped co désign not just a robust monitoring system whereby at risk communities could be identified, sensitised and helped; it also helped design a remediation process to provide redress in problem cases. Practically the FLA conducts independent assessments of Nestlé’s supply chain, particularly for high-risk commodities like cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire and hazelnuts in Turkey. Following an initial FLA report in 2012, the partnership led to the creation of the CLMRS. This system uses local community liaison officers to identify children at risk, provide remediation (such as school supplies), and address root causes of child labor. Nestlé acts on recommendations from the FLA and publishes annual progress reports. The partnership aims to shift from mere auditing to finding sustainable solutions, involving stakeholders like local NGOs, cooperatives, and government bodies. In terms of scope, the collaboration focuses heavily on the Nestlé Cocoa Plan in West Africa and, since 2012, has been expanded to include other raw materials where labor risks are high. In terms of benefits, the company has a robust coverage for a problematic issue that has prepared it well – inter alia – to meet the demands of regulations like the modern slavery act and the EU Forced Labour Regulation. For its part, FLA has a robust case study of success with a major enterprise with a significant footprint in its area of primary interest that has served as a model for others.
Partnerships that I’ve been involved with that work, start with agreement on: goals; discussion on values; agreement to leave the logos and egos to one-side; clarity on resources available and timing to access them; defined problem statement; clear value add of working together; roles and responsibilities clarity (revisit periodically); agreed exit (very important – when does it end?)
Q1: The example I want to share is a partnership between IFC, World Vision, Oxfam, and Visa to deliver digital humanitarian payments to displaced communities in Colombia.
What made it work wasn’t the technology — it was trust. World Vision, IFC and Oxfam had earned deep community trust over years on the ground. Visa brought the trusted payments infrastructure. No single partner could have delivered without the others.
But trust was also involved in the process and this built over time.
But here’s what I found most interesting : the challenge we ended up solving wasn’t the one we anticipated at the start. We began with an assumption about what the friction point was — and a design innovation process, working directly with beneficiaries, completely reframed it. The real barrier was how to identify beneficiaries and how the agencies could access shared solutions rather than building their own in silos again and again. That shift changed everything about how the solution was architected.
That’s what genuine partnership enables — the humility to let the real problem emerge and the energy to co-create together to solve it.
A1:
· Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais (HUM) in Haiti, led by Partners in Health is a stellar example of extraordinary partnership in action. It is the epitome of ambition in the face of crisis and constraint. Following the tragic earthquake on January 12, 2010, ambition and plans for a hospital on the central plateau expanded rather than settling on “good enough.” The list of collaborators is long, and a fairly complete list is included on the webpage at the first link below. To learn more about this life-changing work, explore the links included below:
One powerful example from my own work is the structured collaboration to integrate Workforce Nutrition (WFN) into India’s corporate ESG and BRSR (Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting) frameworks, alongside on-the-ground workforce nutrition programming in sectors like tea.
This work brings together the govenrment, international development organisations like GAIN and ATNI (Access to Nutrition Initiative), tea companies and other progressive corporates, and local implementing partners.
Why no partner could achieve this alone:
The Government: Holds the regulatory authority and the sovereign platform to shape corporate disclosure norms like BRSR. However, it lacks the field-level technical expertise to design granular, scientifically backed nutrition indicators that work across diverse industries, from garment factories to tea estates.
The NGOs: Bring deep technical knowledge on the four pillars of workforce nutrition (healthy food at work, breastfeeding support, nutrition education, and health checks), along with proven execution models. What they lack is the mandate to make these practices standard across thousands of corporate entities.
The Private Sector: Holds the operational infrastructure, supply chains, canteens, and direct access to millions of formal and informal workers. Yet without a standardised reporting metric linked to compliance or market value, businesses often view nutrition as a localised CSR add-on rather than a strategic human capital investment.
Similarly, in the tea sector specifically, this combination has translated into nutrition interventions embedded directly into workplaces and surrounding communities, improved access to nutritious foods through models like Healthy Line Shops, stronger awareness around maternal and child nutrition, and alignment with national priorities such as anaemia reduction and food fortification. At the policy level, the same partnership logic has begun shifting employee nutrition from a peripheral welfare concern into a core, auditable business responsibility. None of the actors could have achieved this systems-level change independently.
John for me, Nestlé were pretty progressive in their work with FLA and it also gave them some professional objectivity about the challenges of child labour. I particularly liked the solutions they implemented in Turkey on hazelnuts where they implemented a programme that supported teachers from the native lands of the migrant workers travelling with the workers and their families such that they could provide native language education and provide a continuity of learning for the kids.
That tackled the two interlinked “wicked” causes of child labour - poverty and access to education - in one initiative. The parents could earn money, while their kids could receive schooling. It was an effective and innovative solution and one that was far better than one of their main “activist” chocolate rivals who simply shifted sourcing their hazelnuts to The Netherlands without asking where they originally came from!
A1: A practical example from my experience is a school-improvement partnership in rural Upper Egypt. It brought together public education authorities, private-sector funders, such as banks and foundations, and a development organisation with field experience. I was part of this work.
Each partner had something the others could not replace. The public side provided legitimacy, school access, and alignment with the education system. The private-sector partners brought resources and accountability around results. The development organisation brought technical expertise, field presence, community understanding, and the ability to work directly with teachers, students, parents, and local actors.
What made the partnership stronger than any single actor was the combination of physical school improvements, teacher support, student participation, and safer learning conditions, all guided by a gender lens. One actor alone could have addressed part of the problem, but not the whole learning environment. The lesson for me is that partnership works when each side brings a distinct function, and when the work remains close to what schools and communities can actually use.
Q1: The most powerful example I can share comes from Lebanon, where we worked with agricultural cooperatives to shift potato farmers toward varieties demanded by European export markets — within a broader effort to create dignified employment for both Syrian refugees and Lebanese workers in the context of the refugee crisis.
When cooperatives were unconvinced by the idea, we stopped trying to persuade them and instead showed them. We brought a Dutch importing company to Lebanon at their own commercial cost, who committed to supplying the required seed varieties directly to farmers. We built demonstration plots — but farmers had to contribute their own land and labour. No subsidies. Skin in the game.
When those plots yielded a harvest of export-quality potatoes, the ripple effect was immediate. The Minister of Agriculture moved to revise national curricula. Exporters began collaborating with Dutch importers. The whole system shifted.
Crucially, EU export market access — through GlobalG.A.P. certification — also carried strict child labour prohibitions. The same commercial incentive that unlocked ambition among farmers created a direct, enforceable reason to eliminate child labour from their supply chains. No moral argument required — the market made the case.
One example I have been part of is a workforce nutrition partnership bringing together government agencies, private sector companies, NGOs, and industry associations in India’s tea and garment sectors. While each stakeholder had individual strengths, the collaboration enabled far greater scale and impact than any one actor could have achieved alone.
The government provided policy alignment and technical support, businesses integrated nutrition into workplace systems and supply chains, and NGOs led community engagement and behaviour change activities. Together, the partnership improved access to nutritious food, strengthened awareness on health and nutrition, and embedded worker well-being into broader sustainability and ESG discussions.
What made the model effective was the shared ownership of a common goal - improving worker health and productivity through sustainable, system-level change.
During my time leading global talent ecosystems at Salesforce, we built something that still shapes how I think about partnership. Working alongside more than 50 organisations – from global networks like Tent.org to local service providers with deep community roots – we launched a refugee reskilling and employment initiative that none of us could have delivered independently. The partnership secured $5 million in funding, directly upskilled more than 3,000 individuals in digital capabilities, and committed to 1,000 corporate placements by 2026. What made it work was a deliberate decision from day one to co-design for continuity rather than hand-off.
The example that stays with me is the National Business Compact on Coronavirus in Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point we were coordinating oxygen supply chains, public health messaging, and frontline health worker support simultaneously — things that simply could not have happened through any single channel. The government opened doors and provided legitimacy. Business moved fast, brought logistics, funding, and communications reach. Civil society made it trusted, grounding everything in community relationships and technical expertise that no corporate or government body could replicate alone.
What made it genuinely powerful was that it moved beyond transactional philanthropy into shared ownership of a national challenge.. Everyone was there because the problem was too large and too urgent for any of us to solve independently. Everybody had skin in the game as their potential loss was too much
The lesson I took away is this: the most effective partnerships are built around complementary strengths, trust, and a genuinely shared outcome. When those three things align, the coalition becomes capable of something none of its parts could have imagined alone.
Q1 example: FCDO convened Girls Education and Skills Partnership with Generation Unlimited as the lead NGO partner and 11 businesses participating as co-funders with cash contributions, offering time, skills and platforms. Each of the partners was investing in youth employment with own solutions. The partnership brought together complementary skills, knowledge, assets and interest. It wasn’t without challenges (change of government and change of permanent secretary subsequently and of course challenges of sequencing support, understanding and matching with local community needs!), however, what worked was the structure – a corporate advisory council of funders advising and being consulted on the theory of change, opining on progress. The whole partnership was also supported by government convening, having a credible intermediary NGO partner, having the leadership council of governments, CEOs, youth overseeing the work and gaining insights into the work. Outcomes? Certainly, better efficiency over time, new partnerships between partners, therefore less overlap and in the long run greater impact.
Crucially I believe the most important consideration in partnerships is to first invest in understanding the incentives of each actor and then mold the partnership around those.