SECAP Kick-off Meeting
On 31 October 2023, I participated in the SECAP kick-off meeting organised by GIZ, bringing together country leaders and project teams to establish a common approach to supporting the development of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) in the Western Balkans.
The meeting covered team introductions, roles and responsibilities, project activities, implementation arrangements and next steps. The planned implementation period extended from 1 October 2023 to 20 April 2024.
My role as Country Team Leader for Serbia
The meeting clarified the country leaders’ responsibilities and the coordination arrangements needed to deliver the assignment.
As Country Team Leader for Serbia, my responsibilities included overseeing country-level implementation, managing the local expert pool and reporting progress to the overall Team Leader. The role also involved serving as a focal point between the contractor and GIZ country coordination, representing the contractor in cooperation with participating local self-government units, and ensuring quality control of deliverables.
These responsibilities connected technical work with day-to-day coordination: aligning expert inputs, maintaining communication with local governments and keeping activities consistent with the agreed work plan.
Organising the work from assessment to action planning
The implementation framework comprised four connected work packages.
The inception phase covered the kick-off meeting, review of emissions and climate risk assessments, preparation of a common work-plan template and development of individual work plans for participating local governments.
The formulation of mitigation and adaptation actions combined a catalogue of potential measures with technical templates and local workshops. This process would support the selection of suitable actions and preparation of technical sheets describing them.
The preparation of SECAPs would bring these inputs together, integrating strategy, emissions assessments, climate risks, mitigation and adaptation measures into individual plans, followed by draft review and final presentation.
For the Serbian team, this structure provided a basis for sequencing expert work and organising engagement with local governments.
Establishing a shared delivery approach
The kick-off meeting established the coordination and quality expectations for implementation. My focus was on translating this framework into organised country-level delivery, with clear responsibilities and timely expert contributions.
The work plan linked each stage of SECAP development to the next, helping local governments move from assessments towards a structured set of energy and climate actions.
