The Fijian word ‘Talanoa’ refers to an inclusive process of dialogue where all participants, regardless of power or influence, are peers. After the COP23 adopted the Talanoa standard for a year of open consultation in 2018, the Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network put forward a Talanoa Dialogue Engagement Toolkit.

This Resilience Intel meeting toolkit is an extension of the CCEN’s general guidance, and includes the following:

  1. Standard Meeting Agenda
  2. Recommended Thematic Areas
  3. 20-year Future Visioning Process
  4. Variety of Meeting Types
  5. Talanoa Submission Guidance

The permanent URL for this toolkit is ResilienceIntel.org/Talanoa

Standard Meeting Agenda

For Talanoa Dialogue working sessions focused on Resilience Intel-related themes, we recommend the following standard meeting agenda:

  1. Introduction + useful background information
  2. Discussion of participants’ values and local concerns
  3. Form Working Groups around affinities / priorities
  4. Working Groups outline where they want to be in 20 years
  5. Working Groups back-cast 20-year, 10-year, 5-year, and 2-year (2020) goals
  6. Reports from Working Groups to the full Working Session
  7. In Session: Draft Working Session report (outline around WG notes)
  8. After Session: Finalize report for Talanoa Dialogue Preparatory Phase Submission

Recommended Thematic Areas

To deliver substantive, useful, action-oriented stakeholder insight to decision-makers in the UN climate negotiations, participants should structure recommendations to add insight in the following areas:

  • Local quality of life / human health considerations.
  • Incentives / investments in clean infrastructure.
  • Reducing risk of catastrophic damage from extreme weather events.
  • Sustainable production of a healthy and secure food supply.
  • Management of water resources.
  • Targeted investment in innovation.
  • Economy-shaping elements of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.
  • National climate action strategies, playing out locally.

We also recommend that participants seek to identify personal, group, community, or regional experiences — challenges or successes — that might help decision-makers elsewhere identify critical levers of action for rapid decarbonization of industrial and economic systems. More than anything, Resilience Intel means seeing signals that make clear the added value of investing in climate-smart practices.

20-year Future Visioning Process

Since the focus of these discussions is macro-critical resilience intelligence — and relevant insights for the climate-smart financial information sharing system we are building — the 20-year future-visioning process is critical in these sessions. To complete a detailed back-casting from ambitious future goals, the visioning process should proceed as follows:

  1. 20-year vision — What kind of world do we want to live in 20 years from now?
  2. 10-year vision — Where do we need to be in 10-years, given our 20-year goals?
  3. 5-year vision — What specific actions are needed to achieve the 10-year vision?
  4. 2-year strategy — How to leverage the climate turning point
  5. 2018-2019 actions — Making the 2-year strategy real

For a detailed run-through of this visioning process: click here.

Meeting Types

  1. Town Hall Meeting — Open Plenary / Moderated Discussion
  2. Short Meeting — Working Session: Priorities
  3. Detailed Meeting — Working Session: Vision
  4. Full-Day Meeting — Working Session: Pathways

All suggested meeting types included in this toolkit center on a moderated discussion process, with varying structural details. The goal of moderation should not be to control the conversation or pre-empt stakeholders’ original inputs, but rather to facilitate a more robust discussion by drawing connections, marking key ideas for follow-up and working to include all who wish to speak.

The end result should be a coherent list of values, ideas, challenge areas, and desired outcomes, that come together to form a useful, concise, authentic report from verifiable stakeholders to the Talanoa Dialogue.

Outcomes can include, but need not be limited to:

  1. A report to the Talanoa Dialogue Preparatory Phase
  2. Policy recommendations for local official action
  3. Stakeholder feedback (from local government and/or the wider community) to regional or national officials
  4. Outline of new partnerships in line with the aims of SDG17 and/or local public-private partnerships standards
  5. Commitments of local action to overall ambition of national climate action plans

For detailed sample agendas for all four meeting types, click here.

Talanoa Submission Guidance

We recommend that any meetings convened in alignment with this toolkit on Resilience Intel related subjects produce a short outcome report, and that this report be submitted both to the Talanoa Dialogue platform and to our team, using the Contact page.

  1. Be Indentifiable — Communicate transparently which stakeholders are represented & be accessible for follow-up.
  2. Be Concise — Make your report a brief to negotiators; link to detailed materials if needed.
  3. Be Timely — There are two Talanoa Dialogue submission periods (one ending April 2, the other ending October 29); plan accordingly.
  4. Submit Here — Make your submission to the Talanoa Dialogue on the official UN platform at TalanoaDialogue.com

For complete Talanoa Dialogue submission guidance, click here. 

Talanoa Submission from the Resilience Intel coordinating team

  • Title: Making climate intelligence the operational standard for all finance and spending, at all levels.
  • Objective: To make all finance everywhere 100% climate-smart within 20 years.
  • URL: http://resilienceintel.org/april

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