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Introducing Our Learning Ecosystem

By Environmental Governance Programme (EGP)

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO LEARNING, ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT, AND COMMUNICATION

The EGP Learning Ecosystem seeks to build capacity of the stakeholders of the programme to reflect, capture, and share their learning, in order to:

Monitor the project progress across different levels from the perspective of all stakeholders, including their reflection on planning, implementation and follow up (Systems Thinking).
Reflect and generate ideas to constantly improve project implementation, adjusting the project direction based on learning (Adaptive Management).
Create feedback between global and local levels by providing tools, exchanges and events that stimulate cross-level and cross-country learning (Feedback Loops).
Capture and share learning in easily retrieved and communicated formats (Knowledge Management)

The EGP Learning activities, tools and events complement traditional results information and reporting mechanisms, by detecting and documenting changes to our plans and expected outcomes – particularly the unanticipated. Collaborative learning by stakeholders with various functions in mining governance enables the EGP community to capture its own voices, experience, and influence in order to facilitate positive changes to mining governance with a focus on environment and human rights.

How Does It Work?

EGP Learning Templates

Stories of Change

Before Action Review (BAR)

After Action Review (AAR)

Reflection Questions

EGP Stories of Change

ARGENTINA:

PERU:

Learning Hub Reports

ARtisanal and small-scale mining (asm) learning hub:

Participatory environmental monitoring (pem) lEARNING HUB:

Workshop on Environmental Legislation in Mining between Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia (September 18, 2022) (English, Mongolian, Russian)
1st PEM Learning Hub Report (May 16, 2022)

LEARNING FOCAL POINTS MEETINGS:

ANNUAL LEARNING HUB MEETINGS:

2nd Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) Learning Hub (April 6, 2022)

Presentations & Videos

Introducing the EGP Learning Ecosystem
Learning, Monitoring & Adaptive Management: Ideas for Monitoring EGP Implementation and Capturing Change, by Anna George (Presentation, February 15, 2022)
Introduction to the Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle, by Gillian Martin Mehers (Video, April 13, 2021)
Welcome Remarks: 1st EGP Learning Focal Points Meeting, by Sanna Due (Video, May 25, 2021)

Introduction to the Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle

Charts & Illustrations

Key Messages

Introductory Learning Workshop on Environmetnal Legislation in Mining between Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia (September 28, 2022)

Download Report: English, Mongolian, Russian
Key Messages:

Kyrgyzstan and Mongolian share a similar history, geography, and culture. These Central and East Asian countries have also been increasingly committed to improving mining governance for more positive social, environmental, and human rights outcomes. This workshop on environmental legislation in mining with the two mineral-rich countries offered a space for sharing technical knowledge between government decision-makers, civil society, and think tanks and helped generate high-level commitmenttowards working for improved legislation and legal enforcement.
In both countries, there is an urgent need to streamline laws and regulations to operate better together, including by improving enforcement and monitoring capacities and results. Some of the main challenges rely on implementing various pieces of legislation applied to mining, such as mineral, environmental, and criminal law, in a more synergistic manner. In addition, community participation needs to be strengthened throughout the mining cycle, ranging from licensing to mine closure and rehabilitation. Mongolia's recent experiences with Participatory Environmental Monitoring and Kyrgyzstan's work in engaging communities affected by the Uranium Legacy Sites offer excellent examples for further scaling up, informing reforms in legislation and the institutionalisation of participatory approaches.
Workshop participants agreed to further and more in-depth collaboration and exchanges between the countries. Kyrgyzstan's Deputy Minister for Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision, Ms Aisha Karpaeva and the Director of the Department of Green Development Policy Coordination and Planning of Mongolia's Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Mr B. Buyannemekh, underscored the value of this cooperation.

1st PEM Learning Hub (May 16, 2022)

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Key Messages:

Participatory Environmental Monitoring (PEM) has the potential to aid governments, communities, and companies in promoting more inclusive and responsive governance of the extractive sector in general, and more specifically the mining sector. By enabling communities impacted by mining and other stakeholders to collect information on the environmental problems and concerns that affect them, and feed that data into the decision- and policy-making processes, PEM can deliver results towards improved environmental, social, and human rights outcomes in the mining sector.
The EGP has kicked off a collaborative process for developing an evidence-based Global Guidance Note on PEM, anchored in the needs, experiences and tools of practitioners at the country level. The Guidance Note will be co-designed with EGP Country Teams and partners in Argentina, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Mongolia, and Peru. The Guidance Note will be rooted in tangible examples from across regions on how to work with a broad range of stakeholders, including government agencies (national and local), companies and communities. It will offer a variety of actionable policy and programmatic options for development partners across all settings and will be rooted in knowledge from different country-level approaches and practices.
The new PEM channel on Microsoft Teams & SharePoint was launched during the meeting, seeking to offer a forum for continued learning, sharing of experiences and insights from PEM implementation at the country level as well as serve as a key space for co-developing the Global Guidance Note. EGP Country Teams and key country partners and stakeholders are all invited to access this new learning channel. New members and guests can request access via this online form.

2nd ASM Learning Hub (April 6, 2022)

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Key Messages:

There is growing interest in how to improve the governance of ASM activities, which is perceived as necessary for the orderly development of this part of the mining sector, and to enhance its social and environmental performance. By now, we have several decades of experiences of different attempts to achieve successful ASM governance. However, as contexts differ – both within countries, and between regions - there is no general ‘best practice’ that can be identified, but rather several different possible practices and approaches. It is also important to understand the multiple attempts and methods that could have been more effective.
The different approaches of how to manage the ASM sector can be understood as ranging from: (i) Laissez-faire approach, with limited intervention by the State, which is based on the rationale that ASM miners are mainly driven by poverty and have a right to earn a livelihood, and that their low level of mechanisation may not cause widespread environmental harm; (ii) Full ASM support, adopted by a growing number of countries that developed special regulations and provisions for the ASM sector, aiming to support the sector to develop further, but in a more orderly fashion; and (iii) Equal treatment, in countries where small mining operators are subject to the same regulatory requirements and provisions as large mining operations.
The ASM sector is overall not well monitored, but a recent estimate suggest that some 40 million people were directly engaged in the sector in 2017, with around 150 million people depending on ASM for their income and livelihoods across 80 countries in the Global South. ASM is also a significant producer of critical transition minerals needed for manufacturing solar panels and batteries for electric cars, as well as popular electronic products, such as laptops and phones. It is widely expected that this sector will keep growing in coming years and decades.

3rd Learning Focal Points Meeting (February 15, 2022)

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Key Messages:

The EGP Learning Ecosystem provides structured tools, activities, and templates to enable the EGP community to capture its own voices, experience, and influence in order to facilitate positive changes to mining governance. It seeks to facilitate and document multi-stakeholder participation across the programme, including communities impacted by mining, women, and the youth. It also seeks to enable innovation through increased focus on expected and unexpected change and ensure a strong learning culture within the EGP (reflect, capture, and share learning).
The EGP Learning Focal Points are champions for learning and facilitators of the EGP Learning Ecosystem in country teams and with our country stakeholders and partners. The Learning Focal Points will also coordinate documentation of the reflective practice in the new EGP Learning Channel on Teams.
EGP Country Teams have demonstrated progress in integrating learning and reflective practice into programme implementation. Our pre-meeting survey showed that, while 87.5% of the Learning Focal Points reported using at least one of the Learning templates, more than half of them requested further support in using the After Action Review (AAR) and Before Action Review (BAR) templates.

EGP Learning Hub 2021 (November 15 and 19, 2021)

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Key Messages:

The 2021 EGP Learning Hub focused on the climate change and forest management, looking into the role that the mining sector plays in energy transition as well as its contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
Special attention was given to Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM), with a focus on how to engage miners, their associations and communities impacted by ASM. Many participants highlighted the role of Participatory Environmental Monitoring (PEM) in building community knowledge and resilience to multiple environmental and social risks, and how PEM activities can help further protect forests and biodiversity. Another critical area identified by Learning Hub participants was mine closure and rehabilitation, including how to incorporate climate change and forest protection issues into these processes.
Regional exchanges between programme countries showed significant potential for synergies and collaboration, such as integrating climate change risks and adaptation into Environmental Impact Assessments (Central Asia), knowledge exchange on energy transition minerals (Latin America), and developing ASM miners’ skills and capacities (sub-Saharan Africa).

2nd Learning Focal Points Meeting (October 1, 2021)

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Key Messages:

The EGP Learning Ecosystem helps us to reflect, capture and share our learning, and offers structured opportunities for exchanges across the local-, country-, and global levels. The EGP Learning Ecosystem will embed reflective practices throughout the project implementation as a continuous cycle, using key reflective questions and templates, and generating ideas on how EGP’s work can be constantly improved.
The Before Action Review (BAR) template seeks to generate learning and insights that can be helpful in planning and implementing programme activities, and to identify potential knowledge gaps, challenges, or other issues that my need to be solved prior to starting. The After Action Review (AAR) template seeks to gather learning incrementally during the project that can help us adapt to changes that are occurring around the project, and keep a continuous discussion about learning going on in the team, and also with other partners.
The Stories of Change template will also help us deliver knowledge and content with a human- interest angle, focusing on how EGP’s work enabled change in people’s perspectives, experiences, and attitudes.

1st Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) Learning Hub (September 15, 2021)

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Key Messages:

The ASM Learning Bubble seeks help the EGP ASM Community of Practitioners produce guidance documents that assist policy makers and regulators to supervise and control the ASM sector and that also provide direct guidance to ASM miners on how to in practical terms abide by relevant regulations.
The ASM sector represents an important source of livelihoods and income to some of the most vulnerable population groups in the EGP programme countries, including rural and remote communities, women, and indigenous and traditional communities. Lack of proper regulation of the sector and/or enforcement of existing norms can lead to serious environmental degradation and human rights violations, which affect these vulnerable groups and the society as whole, either directly or indirectly.
A major challenge that needs to be addressed is how to best engage with the ASM miners, including in the processes of planning, developing, and implementing guides and guidance documents focusing on the ASM sector. Various EGP programme countries, such as Ecuador, Liberia, Mongolia, and Zambia, have made considerable progress in devising creative ways to work in close and effective partnership with ASM miners, ASM associations and communities.

1st Learning Focal Points Meeting (May 25, 2021)

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Key Messages:

The EGP Learning Ecosystem seeks to help build capacity within the community of EGP practitioners to reflect, capture, and share our learning, and will do so by providing structured tools and learning opportunities and exchanges across the local-, country-, and global levels.
The EGP Learning Focal Points will play a decisive role in shaping our proposed learning ecosystem. They will work with the EGP global team to capture emergent and unexpected learning as well as various stakeholders’ experiences of participation in the EGP.
The Learning Ecosystem will help embed reflective practices throughout the project implementation as a continuous cycle, using key reflective questions and tools, such as the Before Action Review (BAR), After-Action Review (ARR) and the Stories of Change templates, and generating ideas on how EGP’s work can be constantly improved.

2021 Kickoff Meeting (April 13, 2021)

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Key Messages:

New and innovative methods and approaches are needed to facilitate communication with vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 pandemic and involve them in EGP’s daily work. Improved infrastructure, equipment and skills to use digital technologies, online dialogues and internet access are necessary to ensure community and multi-stakeholder engagement during COVID-19 related restrictions and lockdowns.
The unique geographical reach, organizational expertise and dialogue capacities developed by participatory environmental monitoring committees can deliver crucial support to national and local governments in reaching out and supporting vulnerable communities during health emergencies.
The COVID-19 recovery presents an opportunity to build back better, also in the mining sector. Extraction of certain types of minerals is expected to increase, including to recover from the COVID-19-related economic slowdowns, and to fuel the clean energy developments. However, many governments are rolling back social and environmental regulations and safeguards to speed up the economic recovery. There is a need to support governments to ensure that their national mining and investment strategies support a green, low-carbon or carbon-neutral recovery.

EGP Learning Hub 2020 (November 10-12, 2020)

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Key Messages:

The Learning Hub presented a further opportunity for information sharing on global activities, national projects and country challenges relating to EGP’s ongoing Phase Two (2020-2023), whereby the programme has broadened its targeted support to seven additional partner countries with generous support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida): Argentina, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Namibia, Peru, and Zambia.
Phase Two will have a greater focus on sustainable development themes and the cross-cutting issues of human rights; water, soil, air and noise pollution; health; biodiversity loss, forest management and climate change; socio-environmental conflicts; and gender equality and women’s empowerment.
In addition to formal reporting procedures, EGP will support the development of reflective monitoring skills of programme focal points at the country level. These efforts will focus on tracking changes induced by programme activities so that country teams can engage in further capacity building of partners.

Introductory Learning Workshop on Environmental Legislation in Mining between Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia (September 28, 2022)

3rd Learning Focal Points Meeting (February 15, 2022)

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We look forward to working together as an EGP community to learn, apply our learning and adapt the programme through the structured learning ecosystem. We are eager to see what we will learn in this second phase of the programme – collectively!