Projects can be scaled up and benefit more people when countries share the same goal. Countries can share physical space for projects, knowledge and resources to gain mutual benefits and become more resilient.  

Africa’s Great Green Wall, is an ambitious cross-border project to plant and grow 8000 km of trees and plants in the Sahara Region across the width of Africa. This nature-based solution is expected to bolster food security, green jobs, economic opportunities and improve overall quality of life in communities of the 21 African countries involved.  

Even though the Green Wall has been under development for 13 years and it is only around 15% complete, the benefits it is providing are already clear. For example, in Ethiopia, 15 million hectares of land has been restored for agriculture, while in Niger, land restoration has delivered 500,000 tonnes of additional grain per year, feeding around 2.5 million people. When it is completed, it is expected to be 3 times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.

Countries may have a vast background and experience in a specific topic that can be helpful to others when dealing with the impacts of climate change. Offering expertise can help other countries to quickly translate the adaptation solutions in ways that address their own situation. 

For instance, the Netherlands is highly proficient in water management after years of dealing with floods. To facilitate better knowledge-sharing, the Special Envoy for International Water Affairs uses the Dutch expertise to assist other countries with water-related issues. An example of  such collaboration was when Special Envoy Henk Ovink supported the United States task force after Hurricane Sandy. This knowledge from the Netherlands was used to help rebuild and rethink the infrastructure in the affected areas to be more resilient against extreme weather events, like hurricanes, which are strengthened by climate change.

Local knowledge can also be shared and transferred to other regions with similar circumstances or situations. This helps create a network of communities that help each other confront climate change effects and its impacts by building resilience together.  

An example is the indigenous Australian rangers that are sharing their ancient fire-related knowledge with other countries with savanna landscapes like Botswana, where the rangers were invited to demonstrate their techniques. These north Australian practices in fire management have other benefits beyond controlling destructive fires, such as lowering greenhouse gas emissions by protecting forests, which store a large amount of carbon. This kind of local knowledge-sharing is particularly important in places like Australia and California, which are expected to experience more frequent and severe fires due to climate change.

Countries in close proximity to one another often share similarities in their weather, landscape, and climate impacts. Hence, partnering up for regionally-focused research can help shed light on knowledge that might be useful for others in the same region when dealing with climate change impacts.  

Latino Adapta is an initiative that seeks to identify and analyze adaptation knowledge gaps that affect the policies related to climate change in 6 Latin American countries:  Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Costa Rica, Paraguay and Uruguay. This initiative works with the idea that there is enough information and scientific evidence for decision-makers to base their policy advice on, but these need to be bridged in order to strengthen national governance capabilities related to climate change adaptation in these countries.