Margunn Indreboe
[bio]
I think it's exciting. If you're a traditional development person, and I'm not quite sure if they exist anymore, you might say, "Oh, this is not something I'm comfortable with, or I don't know how to address it." But it's a reality. At a global level, we're in a situation where the state-business-society relationship is being renegotiated. It's our role, whether it's government or the UN, to negotiate the parameters and the ways in which those parts come together and collaborate, and set the parameters and standards that we'd like to see. So, I think it's an integral part of what we do and what we will be doing moving forward.
— Margunn Indreboe
Interview transcript
We will ask you a few questions, show you a few tools, and have a conversation. Before we move on to the more interactive part of this conversation, could you tell us about your background? I've seen your work at UNDP before, and now you work at a different organization, so I'm curious about your background and how you got into this field.
So in terms of my academic background, I have a master's degree in development studies and global politics. I then worked in research before transitioning into the development field with UNDP, where I spent 15 years working in various areas such as conflict analysis, crisis mapping, strategic planning, partnerships, and communications. My most recent position was as the deputy representative in Botswana, where we worked on the foundation for the SDG, investor mapping, and the integrated national financing framework. This involved finding ways to bring together private and public financing at both the national and international levels. Now, I am the program director at Norec, an agency under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here, we manage a grant stream of Norwegian development aid that focuses on global partnerships for knowledge sharing and building experiences across borders, with a particular focus on young professionals
Quite impressive. I mean, I know that when Kai put us together, you said it, you might not be the biggest expert in impact investment. But with that in mind, what does this kind of word mean to you? What does impact investment mean to you from your experience, either within UNDP or now at Norec?
I mean, it's one of those things that has become very topical, right? It's become very popular to talk about impact investment. And, you know, often you read about it as the next big thing or the panacea for unlocking progress in development. So it's easy to get excited about it. But it also comes with its own caveats, such as how do you define it? How do you count impact? How do you measure it? What does it mean to be an impact investor? Even in our current grants, we give grants to private sector companies who are looking for investment, and we make a judgement call on whether the project will have development impact. If it does, we consider the project. If not, then we don't. So we evaluate proposals from private sector companies every day in our office, asking ourselves if they will bring the kind of positive impact that we're looking for. I think it's exciting. If you're a traditional development person, and I'm not quite sure if they exist anymore, you might say, "Oh, this is not something I'm comfortable with, or I don't know how to address it." But it's a reality. At a global level, we're in a situation where the state-business-society relationship is being renegotiated. It's our role, whether it's government or the UN, to negotiate the parameters and the ways in which those parts come together and collaborate, and set the parameters and standards that we'd like to see. So, I think it's an integral part of what we do and what we will be doing moving forward.
You mentioned a few things that I would like to explore further. Firstly, you mentioned making a judgement call on whether or not something is creating an impact. Can you elaborate on what you look for when determining this, both within Norec and when you were with UNDP? What criteria do you use to classify something as creating the desired outcomes?
So, the SDGs are the foundation against which we measure whether a project is making a contribution to the SDGs. It's not enough to simply align with an SDG and tick the box. The contribution must be part and parcel of the main business of the organization. For example, Norwegian development priorities and efforts this year are focused on food security and climate change. In our COVID proposals, we say we want to maintain a diverse project portfolio, but we will prioritize projects that contribute to food security and address climate change. If a civil society organization that normally runs education projects sees the call for proposals and adds something related to food security just to tick the box, we will judge whether it's really core to their expertise and competence and part of their organizational strategy. If it's not, then it may not have the intended impact we're looking for. The same goes for private sectors. We may have a partnership between two hotels that want to exchange staff, which may be about decent work, but it may not be core to their business to contribute to the SDGs. We're looking for projects that are catalytic and transformative and that have an anchor in the management and core mission and business of the organization, anchored within the longer-term strategy of the organization.
It makes a lot of sense. Then, the other part I wanted to ask more about before we continue is, as you mentioned, something that you know about our organization. It's up to you to negotiate the parameters of how this impacts the investment world. Do you operate within this space? Can you provide an example of how or where you think this has been done successfully?
Governments are also part of that. I don't think it's the role of the government or the UN to become an impact investor or to put their fingers in every pie. But I do think it's their role and responsibility to negotiate that space, to negotiate the roles, and to set global standards that everyone can agree upon. So that all the different actors can come in with their comparative advantage and make a useful contribution in that space. Yeah, that's what I meant, if that makes sense.
Yes, I think it does. Have you seen any examples of successfully creating this space during your time or recently?
So, I know that the Norwegian government supported UNDP to develop a SDG impact tool. However, I think it is still quite theoretical. The attempt to create integrated national financing frameworks and the SDG investor map are our attempts to put that platform in place and crowd in those actors. This type of capital is not necessarily connected to the development dialogue in particular countries. So, do I think it is at the scale that is needed? Probably not yet. Do I think that everyone has the same understanding of each other's roles? No, I don't think so either. Therefore, I think we still have a fair bit of work to do.
That's really interesting. And I think I'm going to pause it here, because we're going to try to chip away at this a bit later. One thing I wanted to ask is, throughout your career, was there a really good example of development work, or investment for my projects, where communities were involved nicely, and their needs were represented by NGOs who were involved in the projects you were running, so that the outcome was mapped to them?
There are many good examples, such as those found in every organization, that show a positive impact on their business or community. However, it becomes unclear when trying to connect these examples to national or global development priorities. The development space and resources are hard to understand when looking at global financial flows. While positive impacts can be seen on a local level, it may not be possible to categorize them as having a global impact.
In Lebanon, UNDP ran the Lebanon Host Community Support Project, which worked with Syrian and Lebanese communities to agree on common priorities in their villages and towns. They identified infrastructure or social initiatives that would have a positive impact, such as creating green spaces for people to come together. UNDP funded one or two of the initiatives, which were prioritized by the communities themselves. This approach was driven from the ground up, giving the communities ownership and a stake in the project.
In Botswana, there was a supplier development program for small and medium-sized enterprises. UNDP acted as a facilitator, connecting these enterprises to larger investors and markets. For example, if a tomato or vegetable producer applied, UNDP would bring in a business consultant to help improve their quality and quantity of goods and connect them with larger supermarket chains. This was a structured nine-month program where the business consultant worked with both the supplier and the large investor, forming a triangular partnership. UNDP facilitated the process, improving the supplier's processes and bringing in investors.
The Norec model, which I currently manage, starts with a feasibility study. If a project idea is proposed, we ask who the partners are and if they already have partners. We want the process to be organic and driven by the partners themselves. The first stage is to apply for a feasibility study, where partners meet and design the project together. They set goals and find the methods and approach they want to take. Only then will we fund the project. This ensures that the project is anchored in their needs and leadership, and that it's part of what they really want to do. There are many examples like this.
This is really, really good. I just want you to maybe pick one of these. I'm going to share my screen to show you. This isn't the interactive part of the program. I will share my screen and you can choose which project you want to focus on: the host community support projects in Lebanon, the Norec general business approach, or the supplier development.
which one do you think is most interesting?
we can take the Lebanon host community support programme. Okay. Yeah.
Perfect. So definitely, I heard local communities as one of the key collaborators. And then I'm gonna add the UNDP in here as well. Is there anyone else? So of course there is but that you want to kind of highlight as key collaborators within this project project? The government, local government. Okay. Yeah. Was there anyone else? Investors on other sides? I mean,
I think UNDP, in some ways, is the investor. No, they are not the investors themselves, but they have investors behind them. So UNDP will bring investors into the program behind its back and then be the channel through which the funds flow. UNDP has all the donors behind this.
That's great! Your insights on foresight tools are very helpful. Could you explain how to help people think about future impacts in the long run without getting too specific?
Um, I think what I mean is that almost any foresight tool is still new to many political leaders. I find that exciting. They're caught off guard, which means they don't come in with a set agenda or a strategy to manipulate the tools. I think any type of foresight tool has been very helpful in that sense. It lowers the barriers to have honest conversations across parties and current differences.
Okay, so I've just put scorecards, which is interesting, how they, the government, will hold the government involved within this process.
So, the government would often end up being the owners, or rather custodians, of local initiatives such as community parks, football fields, or community halls. However, the local governments would end up being the custodians who run, maintain, and manage these initiatives. The local government has a strong ownership role in this process, as it ensures sustainability.
I'm curious about the role of local communities in developing initiatives for their city. Do they come up with the ideas themselves, or are they involved in a different way?
They are the originators of the ideas. The that identified the needs. And, and I mean needs and solutions now suggested solutions
Was this a community of a specific nature, such as educational, or was it more of a free-for-all?
free for all? Then, of course, the solutions in the end, they get grouped into sectors, but the Yeah, yeah.
I'm just curious about the decision-making process for determining which ideas get pushed forward. Was there a voting system or was it a different kind of decision-making process?
It was a participatory process, where various workshops were held to map out the needs and prioritize them. Then, solutions were mapped out and prioritized, followed by a secondary prioritization based on financial feasibility. If the number one priority requires a budget that is 10 times the available funds, the community would have to be informed and given the option to either fund one project or choose from the lower priority projects that can be covered with the available funds.
And who was responsible for that kind of prioritisation? The government? Or was it like between the ministry of UNDP and the government?
So, UNDP would set the parameters in terms of the amount of money available. Then, together with the government, it would work with local authorities and communities to determine what they would like to do. They would review the available options and decide whether to pursue project A only or to create a combination of projects B, C, and D. This is a collaborative process.
Okay, so I'm just going to put that there. Are we missing anyone else from this map or anything else that we might have missed?
Know, I mean, the contractors in the sort of the implement come into it now. And they are contracted through UNDP, but report to the local government, I think.
So basically, they report, like you said, to the local government, but are contracted through UNDP. Yeah,
Yeah. And they have no decision-making power as such, right? They've just responded to a tender that has clearly outlined the objectives and the deliverables, and they come in and execute. Yeah.
And is there any feedback, like, okay, so you mentioned the scorecards? Basically, the feedback loop goes from the local communities to the ministry and UNDP through the government, and then, within the budgetary restrictions, it is decided whether or not something needs to be changed or adjusted. So the contractors basically only receive confirmation that everything makes sense. I just wanted to go over this to make sure that I understand it all. So the finances, as you said, come from the UNDP, and the reporting system is for the scorecards. Is there anything else in which the government or the local communities could come back to you and say, "Okay, this needs to change"?
I mean, then they go through the they go to the local authorities now. Yeah.
Okay, and what about the prioritization strategy for those initiatives? Because one of the things you mentioned was financial aspects, but were there any other issues that needed to be addressed?
So, I mean, the initial strategy, I guess, lay with UNDP, in the sense that the idea for the program was born out of UNDP. In dialogue with the national government, however, once that program was established and the parameters for investment were set, the strategy was not set by the local communities. They were the ones who decided how it would look in their village and what they wanted to spend the money on.
Yeah, so basically, the initial strategy and funding may have come from the conversation between the government and the UNDP. Then, the strategy of determining what is missing, such as ownership under local communities, would be developed. How did that process work? Did you select a few key organizations or was it an open tender? Was there a big workshop and did everyone want to participate? How did you engage the local communities?
So, the targeting - that's what they call it - of communities was done based on a National Vulnerability map. Now, that is complicated. It's called the Lebanon Host Community Support Project, and it's tied, obviously, to the Syrian refugee crisis. So, there was a mapping of all the communities in Lebanon, and a ratio was calculated between the Lebanese population and the Syrian refugee population. The communities with the highest proportion of Syrian refugees per Lebanese were deemed the most vulnerable and therefore prioritized for an intervention or program like this. I think it's called the 2/5 map of 251 communities across the country that were deemed the most vulnerable and therefore should be prioritized in terms of host community support.
The last bit I want to know within this project is just which areas worked really well, and we can put a green dot next to them. Where do you think we need to work harder to get around? And I don't mean internal politics, but where you found the biggest blockers.
What's the most? I think what you have to be, even though you have this vulnerability map, obviously, at the local authority level, politics come into play, right? And Lebanon is a country that struggles with internal conflict. So you always have to be aware of not being hijacked by political agendas. Even if you say yes, it's the communities themselves that decide and it's all driven from the ground up, you have to be aware of who's in the room. If it's only the supporters of the mayor, and therefore belongs only to the Sunni community, or the Shia community, or the Christian community, or certain communities, you have to also have that external look and say, "Is this a balanced representation? Or does it only look like it?" Because you've done the community consultation, you could sort of tick that box and say it was driven by the community, but who is that community? Who are the people in the room? And how do you make sure that the room you have is actually representative of the larger community around? Then with the national government, you have 251 communities that everyone has agreed are the most vulnerable, and that's a big achievement in itself. But you may not have enough resources to cover all 251 in the same way. So how do you prioritize within those 251? Where do you go first? Where do you have that first workshop? Where do you put the first million dollars? And again, it comes to politics, right? Because the Ministry of Social Affairs is run by a particular political or religious group, you have to make sure that you're not going to their home villages so that they can go back and say, "Look what I brought you from the national government! Look at the investment that I, me, myself have brought to you, my community." So I think that's the biggest issue. The politics around it, that even though the process is designed perfectly to counterbalance that, there are ways in which politicians can use that process.
Before we continue, I'm curious to know how the prioritization was made for privatization. I can imagine it was a difficult process. Was it simply based on data?
It's based on data? Yes, you do. You have a team of conflict analysts who can also use that map and overlay it with political affiliations, religious affiliations, and a social tensions monitoring tool. This helps you to see where you actually need to go versus where they say you should go. You also need to know the communities. You have local facilitators who know the communities, and you make sure to set criteria for who's part of the workshop. Do you have refugees, youth, women, and people from different religious, family, and professional backgrounds? This ensures intentional diversity management.
Are these scorecards essentially created like, for example, project diversity cards, todetermine which project requires the most data points? Or are they not used for projects at all?
That's just based on how you select the communities and ensure representation when they select the projects. Then you can ask questions like, "What do you really want with this? Why do you say you want the community hall? What are you going to do with it? Where's your strategy to maintain and use it and how are you going to safeguard it?" There is no scorecard, but there is an evaluation in terms of its development impact. Does it address the need stated at the beginning? Is it sustainable and manageable for the local authorities? Is there sufficient commitment from all sides to ensure success? There are criteria to go through to evaluate the project. The UNDP does not simply take the list and reject projects. Instead, they ask for a plan and evaluate it to determine if there is a reasonable chance of success.
I have a final question on this topic. Earlier, you mentioned that impactful projects can be found at the local level, but the challenge is scaling them. What do you think is the biggest barrier to scaling these projects and having an impact across Lebanon, even at the regional or national level, beyond just local budgets? Specifically, what are the main obstacles that make it more difficult to achieve success as you move up the chain of command?
I think it's politics, economics, and financial flows. So this project may be big in the development world, managing $60 million to $80 million a year, but $80 million a year in a national context is very small, right? And yes, it has a positive impact on community relations and provides a platform for communities to come together and interact more. But if the national government wakes up one day and says, "We're going to return all the refugees forcibly," and bulldoze their houses and move them, then where do you stand with your little community ball and football field? So I think it's the challenge of making sure that everyone is pulling in the same direction.
And how do you solve that? How do you get everyone onto the same bandwagon, so to speak?
But this is where you have to work at different levels. I mean, these projects are great at the community level, but you also need political processes and negotiations at the national government and international levels. Lebanon, in particular, is a country where national decisions are not made within the country. They are made in France, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, and Russia. So, you have all these strings being pulled in different ways. We all have different roles to play. European presidents, politicians, and the EU have a role to play. The UN also has a role to play in terms of trying to move these parts and bring them closer together. But it's an enormous puzzle.
Maybe that project wasn't such a good example.
This is actually really good. Before joining this project, I worked for a very long time creating tools for the UN and different organizations around SDG data to help with empowerment in areas such as poverty, hunger, and water. All of these projects often come down to the conversation of how to get everyone aligned. It's one thing for me to create a tool that shows where the issues are, and for someone else to create one, but it's a much different story when it comes down to implementation and understanding the real needs. To me, this is fascinating. I would like to pick your brain for about five more hours. This impact investment project is trying to understand how we can get the voices of the communities to be equally represented at the table with the finance and government voices. You kind of come back to this huge puzzle where you need to find common ground. In certain parts of the world, it may be easier, but in certain parts, it becomes a bit more difficult. So I think this is fascinating
It's fascinating to hear how you get everyone to be aligned. Earlier in the conversation, you mentioned that your position provides a platform to set standards for people to create great work. Drawing from your experiences and expertise, how do you set up those standards? In the decision-making process, who is involved? Do you consult with other partners? How do you come together to agree on a set of standards to work towards? That's my question. Thank you.
I think the comparative advantage that the UN has is that it comes in with a certain weight, right? It has a certain profile that demands respect. In some ways, it's always invited in by the government because they feel they can't say no. But it's also a relatively neutral partner. For example, in Lebanon, my role was not to run this project, but to negotiate the response plan at a national level. My role was to make sure that every ministry sat at the table with every UN agency or sector, and that we negotiated what our common needs were for the Syrian refugee population and for the Lebanese population. We also prioritized our sector plans, and the UN ended up being the convener because we could bring in ministries that may not be able to meet directly themselves because of different religious or political affiliations. But they could come to a UN meeting because it's neutral ground, which opens up the possibility for a conversation. So I was their broker in all of that. How we agree and set those standards depends on the political climates in the room. I'm a big fan of foresight tools because I think once you project far enough into the future, it's easier to agree that you want your grandchildren to have decent education, good health, and live in a peaceful society. You don't get bogged down in the political divisions that are consuming you at the moment, which makes it impossible for you to step out of that box. That's one tool. Another tactic is to bring it down to a technical level or park conversations and say, "Let the technical people deal with this, and we move on to the next thing." That brings it out of the political sphere and down to a technical level where they may be more able to see eye to eye and come back with a solution or just implement it without making a big deal out of it. There are ways to bring it out of the political climate and then bring it back.
Was anyone else using any kind of reporting systems?
At UNDP, in collaboration with the National Ministry of Social Affairs, we manage a project. UNDP is responsible for managing, reporting, and keeping investors and learners satisfied. We are also working on a community scorecard that will be run by the communities themselves to ensure a feedback loop. Once we approve a project idea, we fund it and bring in contractors to help. Afterward, we evaluate its impact and whether it solved the issues we initially aimed to address. The football field, community hall, or healthcare station should be used effectively. The project is still managed through UNDP and is not an independent reporting mechanism at the community level.