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Effective Collaborative Action
Food systems transformation is inherently complex. It requires aligning policies, institutions, investments, and actors across sectors such as agriculture, climate, biodiversity, and economic development. No single institution or stakeholder can drive this transformation alone.
Across many countries and programmes, a consistent challenge emerges: the challenge of fragmentation.
- Policies are mostly developed in silos
- Stakeholders often operate with misaligned incentives
- Public and private investments usually lack integration
- Multi-stakeholder platforms exist but with weak institutional anchoring
As a result, even well-designed technical interventions may struggle to scale, sustain impact, or mobilise finance.
Collaboration is widely recognised as essential—but in practice, it is often informal, unstructured, and difficult to sustain. Effective Collaborative Action (ECA) responds to this gap. ECA positions collaboration not as a soft process, but as a strategic driver of systems transformation. It provides the structure, facilitation, and tools needed to move from fragmented efforts to coordinated governance systems that enable policy alignment, collective action, and resource mobilisation.
ECA is designed for country teams, government institutions, private sector and implementing partners seeking practical approaches to structure collaboration and translate dialogue into coordinated action.
What is ECA?
Effective Collaborative Action is a comprehensive approach to designing and implementing collaborative governance systems that enable food systems transformation.
ECA operationalises the UNDP Food Systems Team Theory of Change by activating key levers of change:
- relationships
- institutions
- resource flows
- behaviours
- power dynamics
Through its four building blocks, ECA provides a structured pathway for transformation:
Understanding the system: ECA applies power analysis, policy coherence diagnostics, and stakeholder mapping to surface structural barriers and opportunities across institutions, relationships, and resource flows.
Co-creating the approach: it convenes public, private, and civil society actors to design context-specific governance mechanisms, multi-stakeholder platforms, stakeholder group and/or sector specific collaborative spaces and policy solutions that align incentives and clarify roles.
Taking collaborative action: ECA supports the institutionalization of governance, policy and financing agreement. Through capacity building—including a “train the trainers” approach to build capacities of local stakeholders and implementing partners—expert facilitation and advisory, we design and co-lead interventions to embed these agreements in formal mandates, action plans, financing frameworks, and implementation mechanisms that strengthen participatory governance and unlock public and private investment.
Learn and adapt: ECA building capacities around effective, participative governance, policy coherence and public/private sector engagement to unlock finance integrates systems-informed monitoring and reflection, enabling continuous adjustment across mindsets, behaviors, and institutional arrangements to ensure results are sustained and scalable.
In this way, ECA moves beyond facilitation to become a practical transformation pathway for aligning governance, policy, and finance.
ECA’s Unique Value Proposition
ECA is a cross-cutting enabler that can be integrated into any food systems or agricultural commodities programme.
It is particularly relevant where:
- multiple stakeholders must align
- policy fragmentation limits impact
- platforms require strengthening or institutionalisation
- investment mobilisation is a priority
ECA enhances programme effectiveness by ensuring that:
- collaboration is structured and purposeful
- governance systems function effectively
- policies and investments are aligned
- implementation is coordinated and scalable
Through five complementary unique value propositions:
1. Structured Methodology and Frameworks: clear pathways from fragmented engagement to institutionalised governance.
2. Facilitation and Implementation Partnership: Hands-on support from design through implementation.
3. Integrating the Technical and the Relational: Bridging policy, finance, and governance expertise with trust-building and stakeholder alignment.
4. Making Collaboration Measurable: Using tools such as Signals of Change and maturity assessments to track progress and enable adaptive learning.
5. Building Capacities for Sustained Change: Embedding skills, ownership, and institutionalisation beyond project cycles.
The impact of ECA
Where collaboration meets the ground. Examples of countries and initiatives supported with Effective Collaborative Action tools:
Our work on collaboration over the past 15 years has supported the creation of 16 National and 15 Subnational Commodity Platforms; 10 National Action Plans, of which 4 have been legalised and 8 Subnational Action Plans of which 4 are legalised, across 8 global agricultural commodities: palm oil, pineapple, cocoa, coffee, soy, beef, cashmere and fisheries.
44 countries have received ECA services (with key examples highlighted in the visual map) through global platform support under initiatives such as the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) GEF 7 Program and the Scaling Up Climate Ambition on Land Use and Agriculture (SCALA) UNDP and FAO program, national and subnational initiatives such as the Green Commodities Programme and the Sustainable Landscapes Project Indonesia (SLPI) funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
ECA support to these programmes and UNDP country offices is materialized through offerings on capacity building, direct support to the design, facilitation and enhancement of collaborative spaces (multistakeholder platforms and dialogues) and advisory support to enhance participation and collaboration for more efficient and agile governance mechanisms, increased policy coherence, private sector engagement and public-private partnerships (PPPs).
For more details please access the ECA Impact Brief HERE.
ECA’s contribution to governance
ECA supports governance not as a one-off intervention, but as a systemic and iterative process.
Through its four building blocks, ECA enables the transition from informal collaboration to institutionalised governance mechanisms:
1. Understanding the System
- Mapping stakeholders, mandates, and power dynamics
- Assessing existing governance structures and gaps
- Analysing policy coherence and institutional alignment
2. Co-creating the Approach
- Bringing together key actors across sectors and levels
- Building shared understanding and trust
- Defining common priorities, roles, and governance arrangements
3. Taking Collaborative Action
- Establishing or strengthening multi-stakeholder platforms
- Embedding coordination mechanisms within institutions
- Linking governance structures to policy processes and investment planning
4. Learn and Adapt
- Monitoring governance performance and maturity
- Using tools such as the MSP institutionalisation assessments, stakeholder and government engagement framework
- Adapting governance mechanisms over time
Through this approach, ECA enables stakeholders to move from dialogue to coordination, from coordination to institutionalisation, and ultimately to systems-level impact.
For example in Costa Rica, through the Scaling up Climate Ambition on Land Use and Agriculture programme, ECA supported the Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen coordination across departments responsible for agriculture, climate, and biodiversity. This led to the establishment of a formal technical coordination mechanism (ETAP) within the ministry.
Impact:
- Institutionalised governance structure for cross-sector coordination
- Improved alignment of national policies and programmes
- Stronger foundation for coordinated implementation and investment
ECA supports policy coherence as a collaborative and iterative process, linking technical analysis with stakeholder alignment and institutionalisation.
For example, in Mongolia ECA supported a national policy coherence assessment across major initiatives such as the Food Revolution and White Gold programmes. Through multi-stakeholder engagement and structured analysis, ECA helped identify alignment gaps and opportunities.
Impact:
- Clear roadmap to harmonise policies across sectors
- Strengthened inter-ministerial coordination
- Improved basis for aligning public investment with national priorities
ECA supports financial sustainability as a systemic and collaborative process, linking governance, policy, and finance. Through this approach, ECA transforms collaboration into investment-ready action and sustained financing pathways.
For example in Peru (Cajamarca) under the Green Commodities Programme III, ECA supported stakeholders in Cajamarca to connect platform priorities with public investment processes. Through facilitated dialogue, a public investment project aligned with sustainable production priorities was identified and advanced.
Impact:
- Translation of multi-stakeholder priorities into a concrete investment pathway
- Improved coordination between government and value chain actors
- Strengthened financial sustainability of platform-driven initiatives
Monitoring and Measuring the Impact of Collaboration
The ECA MEL Framework combines a series of indicators to measure the impact of collaboration in food systems transformation, with diagnostic tools that support the assessment of existing levels of MSP institutionalization and multi-stakeholder collaboration.
The Signals of Change (SoC) assessment is a systems-based, participatory, self-diagnostic process that helps stakeholders articulate a collective, shared understanding of their current level of collaboration in a given initiative, project, or geography through the harvesting of qualitative and quantitative data. The self-assessment is conducted with representatives of the different stakeholder groups involved via online surveys, an interactive multi-stakeholder workshop and targeted interviews.
5 Dimensions and key principles of good multi-stakeholder collaboration measured by the Signals of Change Assessment
Peru (Cusco) – Reactivating Multi-Stakeholder Governance (under GCP III)
In Cusco, ECA and Signals of Change were used to assess and revitalise a dormant regional platform for coffee and cocoa. Through participatory diagnostics and facilitation, stakeholders redefined the platform’s purpose and structure.
Impact:
- Reactivated platform with renewed stakeholder engagement
- Strengthened trust, leadership, and coordination
- Platform repositioned to support sustainable commodity strategies
Publications
Dive into the implementation of collaboration and systems change approaches on the ground.
Effective Collaborative Action - Impact Brief
Contribution and impact of UNDP’s multi-stakeholder action for sustainable commodity production and trade. It explains how to build collaborative action among multiple stakeholders, how to engage them, and provides examples of results from around the world.
Deep Collaboration: Why it’s needed for Resilient Food Systems | United Nations Development Programme.
