From 2020 to 2022, UNDP conducted a series of "co-inquiry cycles" on the theme: How can we work more systemically to accelerate progress toward a more sustainable food system? More than 150 representatives from multilateral and bilateral donors, development agencies, academia, civil society, and the private sector contributed.

The co-inquiry provided actionable recommendations for adopting more systemic, collaborative and adaptive approaches to development programming, with a particular focus on food systems, set out in the report Navigating Complexity in Food Systems: From Clockwork To Cloudwork.

C3 builds on these findings and the wider expertise in collaboration and systems approaches of UNDP, Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (WCDI), FAO and UNEP, particularly in relation to food-biodiversity-climate nexus issues

According to the co-inquiry findings, the successful adoption of systems approaches, multi-stakeholder collaboration and adaptive management requires:

Building capacity in methodologies for working with complex adaptive systems, as well as the ‘inner capacities’ for ‘systems leadership’
Accelerating organisational change, including: breaking down silos and taking more multi- disciplinary approaches; adjusting organisational policies and procedures to be more agile and adaptive; strengthening organisational learning
Adopting more collaborative and adaptive approaches to program design and implementation, including: using more inclusive, participatory processes; supporting champions of change; putting learning at the heart of programs; taking a more flexible approach to planning and budgeting; developing portfolios of interventions
Changing the wider system incentives, particularly changing the donor requirements for planning, accountability and reporting to support more participatory, collaborative and adaptive approaches to change, and moving to towards systems financing models

All these dimensions are inter-connected and therefore need to be understood and addressed in an integrated and holistic manner, as collaborative methodologies on their own are not enough. It is necessary also to address the limiting conditions and disincentives to collaboration in terms of organisational policies, procedures and wider systemic disincentives to collaboration, such as donor funding modalities.

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