Learning alliances: A collective approach for urban resilience

A learning alliance is a collaborative platform that brings together diverse stakeholders to foster collective learning and innovation. We helped the Sudridh-Nepal Urban Resilience Programme (NURP) establish learning alliances by engaging governments, academic institutions, private sector, development organizations, and civil society.

These alliances help address complex urban challenges such as disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and sustainable development—and integrating a Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development (GRID) approach to policy and programs.

Challenge

In Nepal, there’s been a lack of structured knowledge-sharing platforms within the government. Nepal’s transition to federalism makes the challenge more complex as it involves additional federal, provincial, and local administrative layers. Government entities frequently work in silos, with limited learning and sharing opportunities.

As the country undergoes rapid urbanization, there is opportunity for the government to learn and adopt best practices around service delivery, urban development, and resilience efforts. But a lack of strategy or action plans often hinders the ability of the local government to address urban resilience challenges effectively. Establishing a culture of “learning by doing” has yet to be fully prioritized and practiced, especially in the municipalities (MCs), hindering local government’s efficiency and responsiveness.

Solution

In order for NURP to create an environment for green, resilient, and inclusive growth at sub-national level, it had to:

1. Break down existing barriers to collaboration among government and other stakeholders—especially the private sector—to address a lack of trust.

2. Ensure that learning from NURP could inform practices beyond the geographies where the project directly intervened, as well as across sectors, so that lessons and commitments were sustainable.

Our team drew from both international best practice and ICF’s experiences delivering projects such as the FCDO-funded Learning, Evidence and Advocacy Partnership (LEAP) in Nigeria. We supported NURP in launching the Urban Areas Learning Alliances to identify, share, and adapt good practices. The goals of these learning alliances were to strengthen capacity; generate and document development outcomes; identify future needs or areas for collaboration; and inform public and private sector policy decisions.

Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, NURP successfully initiated the virtual learning alliance platform in 2020. This platform facilitates regular exchanges—sipping tea and engaging in learning loops—allowing local officials to connect with experts and federal and provincial government leaders across various sectors and themes.

The Urban Areas Learning Alliances serve as a space to foster peer-to-peer learning among diverse stakeholders involved in urban resilience, including representatives from all three levels of government: federal, provincial, and local. NURP aims to strengthen capacities, generate and document development outcomes, identify future needs or areas for collaboration, and inform public and private sector policy decisions.

The learning alliance platform has facilitated municipality-to-municipality, inter-government, and community dialogue and a technical expert’s webinar. Participants identify, share, adopt, and scale up best practices, as well as amplify grassroots voices to inform policy reform. We’ve organized learning alliance events across all these categories to emphasize common understanding around the importance of regular “pause and reflect” sessions, managing feedback loops, and creating safe spaces for open dialogue among team members.

Results

Learning alliances have helped to bridge the collaboration gap and to cross-fertilize learning across the three levels of government in Nepal, creating a space to share experiences and solutions in urban development with their peers across MCs. Our program fostered a culture of peer-to-peer learning across various themes: Green Growth, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI), and COP themes aligning with GRID. Throughout the project we gathered valuable, diverse insights and effectively disseminated them to support urban resilience.

Due to the diversity of urban areas across Nepal, we adapted a cluster-level approach to extend the reach of the program beyond the project municipalities to include Siddhartha Economic Corridor (SEC) and Mithila Circuit municipalities. This diversity allows stakeholders to share and learn from one another, fostering the exchange of best practices and innovation. It creates a positive cycle of replicability and emulation among cities and the government.

In 2022, a learning alliance focused on “Public-private partnerships for improved local services” engaged 15 municipalities from the SEC and Janakpurdham Sub-Metropolitan City. Mayors, deputy mayors, and other officials identified key actions to foster collaboration between municipalities and the private sector. After seeing the benefits of this approach, the mayor of Janakpurdham Sub-Metropolitan City established a network of municipalities similar to the forum for the SEC. With NURP’s support, the Mithila Circuit Municipality Network focused on cultural tourism, bringing together 12 mayors, resulting in a new declaration to promote collaboration and green growth in the region.

Our program’s adaptability in aligning a learning-sharing approach towards emerging needs enabled timely responses, real time-course correction, and GRID initiatives across three levels of governments. We are now seeing evidence of GRID-aligned municipal annual policy, programs, and budget across various MCs. This demonstrates that the local governments are now actively sharing their best practices with other municipal colleagues during the learning events and discourse program organized by other stakeholders.

The learning alliance platform serves as a beacon of hope, strengthening municipal capacities and bridging collaboration gaps within government. It also plays a crucial role in tracking and documenting development outcomes and promoting collaborative resource sharing opportunities. Further, it informed policy decisions in both the public and private sectors, demonstrating the effectiveness of peer-to-peer learning and multi-stakeholder dialogue in creating an open channel of communication among various stakeholders.

Inclusivity and equity

Our learning alliance approach prioritizes inclusivity and equity, guided by the UN’s Leave No One Behind principle. By allowing citizens, particularly women and excluded groups, to express their concerns and needs, local government can make better informed decisions.

Through our approach of engaging with the marginalized and vulnerable populations, Butwal Sub-Metropolitan City developed guidelines for People Living with Disabilities (PLWD) and Janakpurdham Sub-Metropolitan City established a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) operational procedure that demonstrates a commitment to addressing community needs.