Despite increasing prioritization, resources, and efforts, climate action is still not achieving transformational impact at scale. Many efforts remain fragmented, stuck in pilots and other are bounded projects that do not shift the systems which shape the causes and consequences of climate change.

Country platforms have been proposed as a potential approach to bring more strategic coherence to climate action at national scale. This is a potentially critical step towards transformational scaling. The Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) in Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam were seen as ways to push forward ambitious climate actions with more aligned donor support and resources. Other climate-focused country platforms have followed, focused on energy, food systems, disaster resilience, and other climate challenges.

However, country platforms, like in the climate change sector more broadly, often focus on technical factors and mechanisms for climate action. Political economy considerations, which are critical to understanding the incentives and power of actors with respect to climate decisions and actions, are often under emphasized, if not ignored. Similarly, while the discourse around country platforms often includes the need to engage climate impacted communities, there are few inclusive and meaningful channels for citizen participation or oversight in decision-making around policies, resources and programs. Country platforms often have relatively robust, nationally-led coordination and decision-making structures for government and donors, yet the broader governance dynamics of climate decisions and actions are not fully incorporated into country platform conceptualization, design, and implementation.

All this points to the need for national actors with the support of international partners to take a more politically-informed and systematic approach to engaging country platform development and implementation.

A new approach

A new paper outlines an approach for government, civil society, private sector, and international institutions to consider as they assess and engage existing and new country platforms.

The paper frames effective engagement as a challenge of systems change, and sets out three connected moves that national actors and their partners can use to engage country platforms more strategically: understanding, navigating, and shifting the climate governance system.

Understanding the system comes first. Before reaching for new policies or instruments, country platform stakeholders need to read the underlying political economy: the deep interests and power dynamics, the formal and informal “rules of the game,” and the motivations of actors who benefit from the status quo or stand to gain from change. Political economy analysis can be paired with participatory systems mapping to surface relationships and identify leverage points. For example, when stakeholders in Peru mapped the drivers of Amazon deforestation together, they built a shared picture of the system and where it could be shifted. This work is most useful when country platform stakeholders do it themselves rather than outsourcing it to consultants, and when it is revisited as the platform evolves rather than treated as a one-off exercise.

Navigating the system means accepting that reform is dynamic, not linear. Institutions and policies that look good on paper often function poorly once they meet real-world incentives, so country platforms need adaptive approaches rather than fixed blueprints.  Three things matter most:

• Building and sustaining coalitions that combine technical and political savvy and reach beyond elite NGOs to connect government and social actors;
• Designing policies and processes with political realities in mind;
• Undertaking monitoring, evaluation, and learning that informs strategy and adaptation rather than simply satisfying donor reporting requirements.

Country platforms’ ultimate goal is shifting the climate governance system to ensure that policies, resources, and programs generate inclusive and sustainable impact. This requires change across both formal elements of the climate governance system – resources, policies, and processes – and informal ones, including relationships, norms and mental models. In practice, that means strengthening inclusive, responsive participation and effective accountability from the national level down to the local level. However, participation can be a double-edged sword: formalized but tokenistic processes can entrench elite capture rather than dislodge it, so what counts is genuine inclusion and real influence over decisions and resources. Similarly, oversight mechanisms need to be robust and interconnected to function when faced with challenging political economy realities.

The bottom line is that climate challenges and actions are complex, systemic and political. Country platforms represent the potential for more transformational scaling of climate impacts, but they are far from a silver bullet. Many country platforms are still struggling to live up to their initial expectations. Yet, they represent an opportunity for diverse national actors (with supportive international partners) to come together and work collectively to contribute to more meaningfully inclusive and sustainable climate impacts over the long term. This will require understanding, navigating, and shifting the climate governance systems in which country platforms are embedded.