IIED and Hivos set up 'Change Labs' on food and energy

IIED and development organisation Hivos have launched a two-year strategic partnership to provide research-based policy advice to improve sustainable food systems and access to energy in developing and emerging countries.

News, 22 January 2014
A village in North Sri Lanka benefits from energy provided by a solar panel (Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, via Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

A village in North Sri Lanka benefits from energy provided by a solar panel (Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, via Creative Commons)

The partners will set up two Change Labs in the 'Food' and 'Energy' domains, which will bring the expertise and partner networks of each organisation into joint programmes of work.

This will enable both IIED and Hivos to share skills and knowledge, innovate in their research and advocacy agendas, and identify new opportunities to advance green and inclusive interventions in the food and energy domains.

This will include the collaborative work on greening of informality sectors, payments for ecosystem services, access to productive energy, and other subjects.

In recent years, Hivos and IIED have collaborated on a programme of work called 'Small Producer Agency in a Globalized Market'. This experience was "highly energizing and really productive," says IIED director Camilla Toulmin. She welcomes the new partnership as recognition of the added value of joint learning trajectories. "We need to bridge the unequal patterns of production and consumption through combining our knowledge and design an ambitious and do-able agenda," she says.

Hivos director Edwin Huizing is looking forward to intensifying the collaboration: "Both organisations complement each other very well," he says. "We cannot influence the global green agenda on our own; together we can touch new areas, look forward and experiment to develop unexpected things."