Immediately following the COP 27, Hivos and the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment will collaborate with New Silk Roads and ElRehla to organize a Futures Lab in Sinai – Egypt, to explore the future of just green transitions in Africa.
The Lab will convene pioneering entrepreneurs, scientists, climate enthusiasts, techies, investors, and civil society members from countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Tunisia, Palestine and Uganda. Participants will be engaged in a “futures thinking” approach to construct hopeful scenarios for localized climate adaptation to support the health of the planet, people, and societies.
Fighting the climate crisis
Local actors, and collaborations between them, are indispensable in the fight against climate change. Despite minimal contributions to global carbon emissions, much of Africa is disproportionately impacted by climate change, as evidenced by increased land degradation, extreme weather, and alarming water scarcity. Meanwhile, the funds and technologies to mitigate or adapt to these impacts remain largely out of reach.
Yet local actors are making great strides in harnessing cutting-edge innovations and utilizing the green sector’s potential to create decent local jobs. Solutions that include youth and women to decarbonize key economic sectors are emerging as a direct response to the climate and youth employment crisis.
Futures thinking
“Futures thinking” is a set of methods and tools for imagining multiple possible futures. Grounded in exploring over prediction, and possibility over certainty, futures thinking asks what could happen, not what will happen. By articulating a range of possible futures, the approach helps participants to identify the transformational processes behind future outcomes and identify their roles in the present in bringing about the desired futures they want.
Photo: Nathan Kayanja of Proteen in Uganda harvesting black soldier flies larvae used to produce organic fertilizer
About the organizers
Futures Lab in Sinai: What If Climate Adaptation Were Local? is made possible by Hivos’ GreenWorks Alliance, with support from the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) and with funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. New Silk Roads and El Rehla are the organizing partners.
Hivos is an international development organization guided by humanist values. Together with citizens and their organizations, Hivos aims to contribute towards just, inclusive and life sustaining societies where people have equal access to opportunities, rights and resources.
The GreenWorks program, which is implemented by an alliance led by Hivos, contributes to climate change mitigation by creating sustainable business and job opportunities in North Africa’s green economies.
The CFYE aims to create a prosperous future for 200,000 young women and men by supporting youth employment initiatives, in partnership with the private sector, in the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel, West Africa, and the Horn of Africa. The CFYE is managed by Palladium, VSO Nederland, and Randstad.
New Silk Roads offers a range of futures thinking programs focused on collectively imagining preferred futures and producing bold, innovative future scenarios. For over ten years, New Silk Roads has been working with a range of clients, including international organizations, multinational companies, and creative enterprises.
El Rehla (“the journey” in Arabic) hosts unconventional retreat experiences across Egypt. Since 2013, El Rehla has provided retreat participants with the opportunity to connect, reflect, and build trust. By engaging participants on a personal and professional level, El Rehla helps to create stronger communities to support collective action, collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning.
