DRIVE Impact

The DRIVE Impact initiative is based on four thematic pillars, underpinned by a local and regional focus.

1. Rebalancing partnerships and redefining community engagement

This first pillar re-defines the term ‘partnership’ to ensure that future global partnerships will focus on shared priorities as well as concerns and conditions of partner regions. This means creating the opportunity for equal and open dialogue between local actors and EU representatives, which will require listening and engaging differently and better to and with those who are intended to benefit from funding, as well as other funders, and improving intra-institutional dialogue to reduce thinking in silos. This pillar also encourages and inspires an innovation mindset to funding and understanding impact.

2. Optimising social impact in partnerships

This pillar explores how to ensure community impact and community return on investment locally and regionally. Commissioning can significantly impact the purpose and use of investment and funding, proving to be transformative in terms of metrics and outcomes.

Positive social impact requires listening to local actors, identifying and responding to needs and being creative about embedding, enhancing and accelerating solutions. As climate change and digitalisation  define the current social transition, it is essential to think about how infrastructure and community impact go hand in hand. In this context, social clauses should be factored  into commissioning and funding processes by the EU, development banks and other actors through community dividends. Although successfully trialled across many governments in the world, such clauses have relied on the individual foresight and thoughtful leadership, as opposed to being a standard pre-requisite to enhance social and economic development. The community and social dividends that sit alongside large infrastructure projects can involve, for example, local labour development, increased housing stock, access to finance for entrepreneurs, community facilities or, on occasion, education. The return on the social impact of such mechanisms can be vast.

3. Long-Term Solutions to Natural Resource Management

Our global landscape is widely characterised by a skewed allocation of natural resources – certain regions or populations are disproportionately benefiting from their exploitation, while others are left marginalized and deprived. This inequity is a deeply entrenched structural issue that demands long-term solutions.

This structural inequity, however, can also be exacerbated by an escalating demand for natural resources, their hindered supply, and their limited accessibility. In fact, the world is now facing an increasing demand of natural resources, fuelled by population growth and an urgent need for green transition materials. Environmental degradation and climate change are also shrinking the pool of available resources. At the same time, the accessibility of natural resources is also highly dependent on international trade, which are heavily influenced by conflicts, elections, and other geopolitical factors.

To tackle this inequity, it becomes essential to define a new form of natural resources management – one that is conducted in an environmentally and socially sustainable way. This third pillar thus investigates ways to create resilient supply chains and communities, defining long-term solutions that allow this new system of natural resource management to take place.

4. Trade and investment

Reshaping procurement approaches can be a game-changer in multiplying wider community and social benefits. They serve as a platform for the private sector to define guidance and guarantee mechanisms together with the EU and development banks in order to de-risk private sector contributions by creating a more enabling environment for sustainable investments. Initiatives such as the European Global Gateway should provide a structured and coherent approach to achieving measurable change on the ground through better coordination, alignment and collaboration amongst funders and the (local) private sector. Additionally, this pillar examines, redefines and extends existing guidelines for the involvement of the private sector in partner regions, particularly relating to the upscaling of existing projects.

The DRIVE Impact initiative will be driven by its network of representatives from both EU and non-EU institutions, governments, the private sector including SMEs in project regions, development agencies, NGOs, international organisations and academia.

The network will come together two to three times a year in small working groups of 15 to 20 people, facilitated by Friends of Europe, to focus on one of the initiative’s four pillars. At the end of each year, a wider meeting is held for the whole DRIVE network to reflect on the progress made and set priorities for the coming year.