2023 Shared Pathways Specialist Masterclass
Delivered as a specialist track of the City Diplomacy Masterclass, Shared Pathways was an exchange and capacity-building program focused on strengthening the influence of city diplomacy in tackling climate change. It was supported by funding from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR).
The program was themed around the ‘pathway’ toward the COP28 UN climate summit in 2023. In total, 28 city officials from Australia and China took part in the exchange over two cohorts.
Whilst strengthening bilateral collaboration through urban climate action training, Shared Pathways facilitated a more cohesive dialogue between Australian cities and their Chinese counterparts.
The program was delivered over two cohorts, each comprising a one-month online training and exchange course and a weeklong intensive workshop. The cohort 1 workshop took place in Melbourne/Canberra in May 2023 and the cohort 2 workshop in Hong Kong in July 2023. To finalise the program six participants attended COP28 in Dubai in November 2023.
As part of the exchange, participants also completed a capstone project to develop an implementation-ready international engagement initiative for their local government.
Throughout the program participants had the opportunity to meet and engage with high-level officials from Australia and China, leading academic and practice experts in urban sustainability and city diplomacy and local government peers from both countries.