Capacity Building for Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries to Participate in Post-2012 Negotiations

Small island developing states (SIDS) and LDCs are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Among these impacts are sea level rise, increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events including droughts and floods, changes in the incidence of vector-borne diseases, and issues resulting from alterations in the availability of natural resources.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, developed country Parties aim as a group to reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5% from 1990 emission levels over the Kyoto Protocol's first five-year commitment period (2008-2012). To achieve this overall reduction, some countries have agreed to cut their emissions, some to stabilise their emissions, and some to limit their emissions. However, it is widely acknowledged that the commitments made under the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period are wholly inadequate to reduce the trend of increasing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Under Article 3.9 of the Kyoto Protocol, Kyoto Parties agree to initiate consideration of commitments for the second commitment period at least seven years before the end of the first commitment period - by 2005. A formal process for these discussions was agreed in Montreal in December 2005.

As countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, SIDS and LDCs have a strong interest in inputting into the development of the post-2012 framework. This project is intended to build the capacity of these countries to participate more actively in these global discussions, in order to galvanize international action to avoid dangerous climate change and its consequent impacts on both developed and developing countries. Consensus building will be essential for successful negotiation and agreement of post-2012 Kyoto frameworks.

This project will consist of four components, overseen by the project partners and a Steering Committee composed of SIDS and LDC representatives:

(1) Post-2012 Workshop for LDCs and SIDS -- held immediately prior to COP 12 for climate negotiators;

(2) Issue Briefing Papers -- in accurate, simple, policy-neutral language, developed between negotiating sessions by LDC and SIDS negotiators policymakers for use by LDC and SIDS policymakers and negotiators

(3) Pacific Strategy Workshop -- to bring together key Pacific LDC/SIDS negotiators

(4) Technical briefing support -- for SIDS on issues relevant to post-2012 frameworks in advance of upcoming international negotiating sessions.

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