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Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Cities as Innovation hubs
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Cities occupy only about 2% of Earth’s land area, but house between 60–85% of the world's population. At a time of accelerated change — and with complex issues such as climate change, migration, and inequalities challenging our ability to respond, cities are emerging as leaders. Because cities concentrate on development challenges — access to services, participation in decisions, distribution of water and electricity — they also become a laboratory on how these can be addressed.
Our challenge is to help the city of Skopje and smaller cities around the country with innovative tools to make them ready for the complex challenges of the future. To create an enabling atmosphere and communities that will care a positive long-lasting change within the cities they reside.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
According to the waste composition in the National Waste Management Plan, biowaste accounts for 45.6% of the total municipal waste in North Macedonia, making it by far the most important element of the municipal waste stream. Less than 1 % of the biowaste is composted and none is transformed into more viable products. Following the EU Waste Framework Agreement, North Macedonia has set ambitious goals in waste and biowaste management, committing to recycle 65% of the biowaste by 2030 and landfilling of biowaste should not exceed 10% of the waste generated by 2035 according to the EU Circular Economy Package. If the country wants to accomplish these goals, it must act now and be as innovative as possible. Besides composting, more startups and entrepreneurs should start working in the field, young people and the education community should be engaged, and the wider community should be
participating and changing behavior and perceptions on biowaste.
On the other hand, the citizens of the capital city and other cities have been very active, vocal, and innovative when it comes to advocating for; raising awareness about such issues such as the impact of climate change in their
communities; as well as taking action. We have seen initiatives from civil society organizations that visually presented to the public the reduction of green spaces in our cities; movements that have encouraged recycling and waste transformation; businesses that have used citizens science to raise awareness about air pollution; architects and enthusiasts that have offered visions about redesigning public spaces and making them friendlier and more humane for people; and initiatives to make our cities more friendly for biking and walking, to name a few. We’ve also seen a public conversation spearheaded by both people and institutions on heat waves and heat islands in our cities.
In conclusion, what we are “listening” through collective intelligence on the ground and what we have been exploring in the area of waste transformation, heat islands and extreme weather events urban resilience are that changes are possible but decisive action should take place sooner than later.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
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Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
In our previous exploration efforts we have understood the current state of play of the bio-waste system but also to understand key system dynamics and interactions between the players within the system by doing the first biowaste audits. Furthermore, by doing a feasibility study we understood the potential of products created by the transformation of biowaste have value on the global markets and can be considered as a resource to another industry. In the newly established biohacking laboratory, we have created 50 such products that are marketable and were created as a direct consequence of the working of private sector entities around the country. Further 11 products were created by startups using the biohacking laboratory.
On the other hand for such initiatives to gain momentum community of people is needed to steer the debate of environmental challenges and how we can tackle them with innovative ideas and products. One such initiative that is of particular interest is the analysis and action plan for urban heat islands in the capital city Skopje, from 2018. This initiative, supported by the UNDP country office has mapped [using a thermal map] the urban heat islands in the city and has proposed policy actions to mitigate the impact of these heat islands. Policy action plans have also been created to prevent and mitigate the risks of urban heatwaves on the people living in North Macedonia.
All these initiatives have diagnosed the problem quite well and offered policy prescriptions on how to tackle it, however at the same time, the average temperatures across cities are increasing, more and more biowaste is dumped on the landfields, and ‘cooling spaces’ are shrinking, and the problem seems to be getting worse in our communities. Of course, transformational change is needed to make our cities more resilient to the impact of climate change, but the core question must be - how do we achieve that? what are the methods that we as UNDP can use to change the system?
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
Acceleration labs are uniquely position to experiment with new and innovative methods and approaches in designing the dynamic learning portfolio. It is worth mentioning that throughout the process we were using portfolio approach methodology, for which we were mentioned as the first 40 CO to do so by the Administrator Achim Stiener.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
"Cities the new frontier for innovation development"
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the partner:
City of Skopje
What sector does our partner belong to?
Private Sector
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
On the 24th of February the City Council voted on our proposal for establishing the fist open city biohacking laboratory
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Yes
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
Can we make our cities more innovative in tackling global environmental challenges?
Can we equip the city administration with tools and methods that are before their time in developing countries?
Can cities become innovation hubs where citizens can experiments with solutions for tackling some of the most burning environmental challenges of the day such as extreme weather and bio-waste.
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Sense, Explore, Test, Grow
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
At the moment we are designing options where we will implement options together with the city official where we are planning to test each of the above mentioned innovative methods.
For example hackathons for young innovators to do products out of biowaste
Prototyping Collective intelligence methods for building a community around climate challenges
System thinking in the area of designing a learning portfolio around greener jobs that will be established as a direct consequence of the green transition;
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
As we are working ahead of the curve when it comes to building the intersection between citizen scientists and biotechnologies there are huge data gaps that we need to fill in order to fulfill our goal.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
The whole dynamic learning portfolio around cities is opening multiple entry points to different portfolios within the CO office.
For example: the Environmental Portfolio can use the Collective intelligence part of the portfolio to create youth hubs where environmental change can be discussed in a structured way. Social inclusion portfolio for the creation of greener jobs coming out of the transformation of biowaste into highly valuable products whereas the governance portfolio to pilot innovative financial SDGs related policies like green or social bonds.
END OF ACTION LEARNING PLAN: Thank you! The form saves automatically and your submission has been recorded. You may now exit this window.
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8Decent work and economic growth
9Industry, innovation and infrastructure
11Sustainable cities and communities
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