How can grants effectively support locally-led adaptation: Three key insights from Africa Climate Week Guy Rudolph and Esperanza Karaho from CDKN share their insights from a breakfast discussion held on the sidelines of Africa Climate Week in Nairobi. The gathering involved both grant-makers and grant recipients and focused on answering the question: ‘How can we design our funding programmes to best support locally-led adaptation?’

Ecosystem-based approaches for just climate action in African cities: Seven takeaways from Africa Climate Week CDKN, ICLEI Africa, PlanAdapt and World Resources Institute colleagues reflect on a recent session held at Africa Climate Week that focused on the importance of equitable ecosystem-based approaches as a means to address climate challenges. Several nature-based solution pathways for action are highlighted that have the greatest potential for driving change in African cities.

Key insights: Convening national and sub-national actors in Namibia to scale adaptation action CDKN’s Amanda April, Fatema Rajabali and Margaret Angula reflect on the Namibia country programme inception meeting, where key stakeholders laid the groundwork for collaboration to build resilience, enhance adaptation and promote sustainable practices. The authors share eight insights that emerged from the collaborative meeting.

Practising what we preach: CDKN’s own co-creation adventure CDKN Learning lead, Lucia Scodanibbio, reflects on a recent three day co-creation process the CDKN team undertook to develop a capacity strengthening programme to assist knowledge brokers to be more effective facilitators of climate action. While acknowledging the challenges associated with co-creation spaces, Lucia emphasises the sustainable, inclusive and effective solutions that can emerge from them.

The role of knowledge brokers in advancing climate action In the climate arena and more widely, there are many terms to describe activities within the ‘knowledge-to-action’ spectrum – what CDKN terms ‘knowledge brokering’. This CDKN journal article and accompanying Essentials brief summarises how CDKN defines and understands climate knowledge brokering.

How research and engagement influenced Uganda’s climate change adaptation landscape This learning story shares lessons from undertaking an economic assessment study of the impacts of climate change in Uganda, including how it has since been used to inform policy and planning.

The benefits of a gender audit of climate action: Lessons from Ethiopia The Government of Ethiopia has benefitted from undertaking a 'gender audit' of its climate-smart development activities. Medhin Fissha, the former Gender and Social Safeguards Officer of Ethiopia's Climate Resilience Green Economy (CRGE) Facility explains how.

How to keep online learners engaged Lucia Scodanibbio of CDKN interviews Matilda Rizopulos and colleagues at the Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation about best practices in transitioning learning online: with long term lessons for how we can limit carbon emissions.

Co-producing climate knowledge - Great in theory, but how about practice? Estelle Rouhaud of the Future Climate for Africa's UMFULA project says that 'co-production' of climate knowledge sounds like a wonderful aspiration, but is far from easy to achieve in practice.

Inside Story: Action on climate vulnerability - Lessons from Quito The city of Quito is a good example of how climate vulnerability information can feed into the policy cycle and be translated into meaningful actions on the ground. Now translated from its Spanish original, you can read this 'Inside Story on climate compatible development' in English.

Moving forward with Uganda's national climate commitments Joselyn Bigirwa, National Coordinator for ACCRA - the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance, reports on how Uganda is planning to deliver its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).