An enabling environment for green, resilient, inclusive and circular enterprises in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

About the workshop

ICIMOD is conducting a scoping study on an ‘enabling environment’ for Green, Resilient, Inclusive and Circular (GRIC) transitions/ economies. This enabling environment involves creating the right conditions to successfully implement initiatives to encourage GRIC transitions, implementing supportive policies, allocating resources/budgets, encouraging community participation in decision-making processes, and organising capacity-building training. We have conducted a round of consultations seeking experts’ inputs on the methodology and partners’ engagement. Based on these contributions, we would like to further convene a co-creation workshop to strengthen our partners’ engagement and expertise in creating rich content and understanding of the factors, challenges, and opportunities of fostering an enabling environment for GRIC transitions in the HKH. The content will be used by ICIMOD and our partners to pursue strategies and actions to achieve the following vision of ICIMOD’s strategy 2023–2030:

This workshop is expected to bridge gaps in resource, partnership, and knowledge to mutually address the challenges of creating an enabling environment for GRIC transitions in the HKH.

This workshop is organised by Action Area C: Adapting and transforming livelihoods and economies, Intervention 2: Green, resilient, inclusive, and circular mountain economies; Component 2: Green and inclusive enterprises for high value mountain products and services, under Strategic Group 2: Shaping green and resilient mountain economies.

Objectives

• Bring together multi-stakeholders (policymakers, practitioners, academia, private sector, and investors) and facilitate collaborative exercise to develop mutual understanding and content on enabling environment factors, challenges, and opportunities among the regional member countries and prioritise factors crucial for the successful promotion of green, resilient, inclusive, and circular transitions in various sectors
• Identify leveraging opportunities and partnerships to fill the gaps in enabling environment to promote GRIC approaches along with entrepreneurship, investments, and innovations
• Develop an enabling environment outlook, a common document to take actions while promoting sustainable economic growth addressing environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges in context of climate change as outlined in ICIMOD Medium-Term Action Plan V result framework

Expected outputs

• Refined understanding, content, and strategies on enabling environment
• Well-defined roles, responsibilities, and contributions on follow up documentation and actions in promoting green, resilient, inclusive, and circular transitions, investments, and entrepreneurship in HKH

Background

Climate change is posing several socio-economic and ecological threats. For the mountain region, any temperature above 2°C becomes unbearable, especially for the HKH region. According to the HI-WISE report, changes to the glaciers, snow, and permafrost of the HKH region are ‘unprecedented and largely irreversible driven by global warming’. On current emissions trajectories, glaciers could lose up to 80% of their current volume by the end of the century, drastically reducing freshwater for major rivers in HKH. If no mitigating action is taken, global temperatures could rise by more than 3°C and the world economy could shrink by 18% in the next 30 years. Hence, the public and private sectors play a crucial role in accelerating the transition to net zero.

The HKH is a resource-rich region for tourism, agriculture, energy, and non-timber forest products. These sectors offer unique niche products and services with the potential to generate significant economic benefits, including income, employment, and livelihoods opportunities. Although mountain societies contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions, they are among the first to be affected severely by climate extremes. Climate change challenges coupled with agrobiodiversity loss, the deterioration of production systems, gender and social inequalities, limited access to markets and finances, and inadequate infrastructure and limited capacities are chronic challenges to sustain and amplify livelihoods and socio-economic growth.

While implementing the GRIC approach to entrepreneurship, it will be necessary for all stakeholders to collaborate, comprehend the complexity, and transform solutions from poor infrastructure, limited access to markets and finances, and regulatory obstacles, innovation, entrepreneurial culture, and infrastructural obstacles into a supportive environment for businesses, entrepreneurial activities, and investments. Sustainable economic growth can flourish only when an enabling environment is conducive to entrepreneurship and investments with compatible policies, easy access to finance, and favourable conditions of doing business. This enabling environment would then enable public and private sectors to flow and evolve solutions, investments, and strategies towards achieving net zero transitions.

Agenda