On this platform, you can discover what sustainable development challenges the Accelerator Labs have been working on, which partners got involved and what insights emerged from their on-the-ground experiments. Through these plans, the Labs can identify the way forward by seeing thematic patterns and can foster cross-Lab collaboration.
Join the R&D movement! To become a power user and curator, contact us.
Panama's solid waste journey innovation journey
At its inception in 2021, the UNDP Panama Accelerator Lab chose solid waste management as a priority focus. Seen as an environmental emergency, with only 65% of the waste produced being collected and accounted for, solid waste management in Panama is beleaguered by unclear legislation, limited funding and a lack of data. The Lab saw it as a good fit for the innovation capabilities it was supposed to bring to bear in UNDP.
This workstream ended up being incredibly rich. The Lab proved that it could enable stakeholders to take action by generating new knowledge (via experiments and pilots) and bringing previously tacit community knowledge into the domain of the explicit (via ethnographies and solutions mapping). It chose to geolocate and visualize all of this knowledge, with proved great at mibilizing and aligning stakeholders.
In 2024 the Government of Panama asked UNDP to assist it with its planned new waste management strategy (though UNDP declined). The workstream also generated spinoffs: one on citizen science on marine litter and one on the circular economy, with the San Felipe Neri market in Panama City used as a sort of living lab to rethink waste management in a circularity perspective.
This workstream ended up being incredibly rich. The Lab proved that it could enable stakeholders to take action by generating new knowledge (via experiments and pilots) and bringing previously tacit community knowledge into the domain of the explicit (via ethnographies and solutions mapping). It chose to geolocate and visualize all of this knowledge, with proved great at mibilizing and aligning stakeholders.
In 2024 the Government of Panama asked UNDP to assist it with its planned new waste management strategy (though UNDP declined). The workstream also generated spinoffs: one on citizen science on marine litter and one on the circular economy, with the San Felipe Neri market in Panama City used as a sort of living lab to rethink waste management in a circularity perspective.
UNDP Accelerator Labs
