About ACLP

Addressing complex issues as sustainable land management and ensuring food security in the context of climate change requires dedicated people with vision and the ability to facilitate change. These people act as leaders, be at formal or informal, who understand how different challenges and potential holistic solutions are interlinked and who have the skills to formulate a vision, motivate others and promote collaboration across sectors.

The ASEAN Climate Leadership Programme (ACLP), a new learning and exchange format, aims to strengthen these leadership skills while contributing to ASEAN policy processes and outcomes related to climate change, food security and land management.

The ACLP was launched in 2020 by the Climate-Smart Land Use in ASEAN (CSLU) project. The first two batches, implemented in 2020 and 2021, focused on building leadership competencies critical to advancing climate-smart land use across the region. It aims to enhance participants leadership capabilities, help them to better understand the interconnectedness of challenges and solutions and develop the motivational abilities required to facilitate collaboration across various sectors and levels

The ACLP III is a six-month programme designed to increase knowledge, strengthen skills, and foster attitude shifts in leadership particularly in the thematic areas of climate policy, Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), and inclusivity. Participants will enhance their leadership skills by initiating ideas and facilitating change through their ”Personal Change Project” that will benefit their chosen sector or community. Their projects would drive collective and cross-sectoral transformative actions in agriculture, forestry, rural development, food security, and climate policy.

The programme aids the implementation of ASEAN strategies such as the Vision and Strategic Plan (SP) for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (FAF) (2016-2025) and the ASEAN Strategic Plan on Environment (ASPEN) 2016-2025. It is based on leadership and innovation lab approaches developed by the GIZ’s Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ) and which have been successfully applied in a number of areas. It emphasises the importance of the learning process which continues outside the modules themselves. The ACLP was facilitated by experienced experts specialised in leadership and change theory

Organisers and Partners

The ACLP III implementation is a joint effort from all partners involved. These partnerships underscore the collaborative spirit and shared commitment to advancing sustainable development and environmental stewardship within the ASEAN community and beyond.

ASEAN Secretariat

At the forefront of this collaborative effort as main coordination mechanism for AMS, is the ASEAN Secretariat, particularly through the dedicated involvement of the Food, Agriculture & Forestry Division (FAFD) and the Environment Division (ED). Their guidance and leadership have been pivotal in steering the programme’s direction and ensuring its alignment with the broader objectives of sustainable development within the ASEAN framework.

Key Partners

For the ACLP I and II, several organisations and experts contributed to the programme design and implementation, including the ASEAN Secretariat, the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network (ASEAN-CRN), Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP), the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Grow Asia, the Regional Community Forestry Training Center (RECOFTC) and the Amsterdam Leadership Academy. Representatives of these organisations played a role as speakers, mentors, coaches and facilitators throughout implementation of the ACLP.

Funding and Implementation

The programme is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ) and European Union (EU) and implemented by GIZ, specifically the ASEAN EU-German Climate Action Programme (CAP) and the Promotion of Sustainable Agricultural Value Chains in ASEAN (ASEAN AgriTrade II), which coordinate and provide technical support for the programme’s implementation together with partners.