Going beyond the winner: there are no silver bullets, the Escalaton was a way to articulate and visualize the efforts of diverse actors in the ecosystem, while also generating incentives for new solutions identified to connect and engage in a space with investors and enablers that could support solutions to scale.  A great diversity of solutions, but it is better to focus on a niche: we received 34 applications to the process, with a great diversity of solutions from entrepreneurs, academia, NGOs and even local governments, whoever, that same diversity made it challenging to compare across the particularities and nature of the solutions that participated. We originally proposed only SMES and entrepreneurs with tested solutions, but in deliberation we decided to expand to explore a broader diversity of applications. It was good to see the landscape of what emerged but made the competition un-balanced as the different solutions where in different stages that showed stark differences. The winner was a local government, which based on the criteria evaluation resulted as such, but perhaps it could have been a separate category of solutions to apply (local governments as a sole category, for example) Clarity in the process, the criteria and the selection of the jury: The Escalaton process had a clear timeline and structure, but the previously mentioned learnings on the diversity of solutions that applied showed how it is important to focus on a particular category or 'niche' of actors to make the overall criteria more coherent. The diversity of actors is also important on bringing multiple perspectives and values in the evaluation process during the 2 rounds of evaluation. We had representation from the Ministry of Environment, Audubon Americas, the Industrial Syndicate and UNDP Panama, which was also important in the decision-making process.  Provide feedback to solutions: as part of the process, we also included 2 pre-sessions, one for the pitch and one for the pre-selected solutions for the final round at the Escalaton Summit. In addition, we included a feedback session to share the feedback from the jury back to the solutions and the solutions to share feedback back to us, this was important to collect the learnings for improvements in future efforts of this nature. Follow up on the winner and how to build ecosystems: in the upcoming 3 months, we will follow up on the winner solution, test what work and what does not and how it can connect to broader ecosystems efforts. More than a winner, we were looking for cases to explore and continue to grow circularity efforts for plastics in Panama.

We are still documenting the learnings on this process, but there is strong interest by actors in the ecosystem to continue these efforts, specially from entrepreneurs that often find many roadblocks in terms of formalization, financing and access to markets. More on this coming soon.

Un Círculo Plástico para un Panamá con "0" residuos | Programa De Las Naciones Unidas Para El Desarrollo

Bringing in Escala Latam was an interesting space to connect local entrepreneurs with investors at a national and international level, there is an opportunity to strengthen these links and partnerships to scale local solutions in Panama and beyond.