European Capacity Building Initative - Support to Least Developed Countries in the Climate Negotiations
A key limitation of the United Nations climate change negotiations is the lack of a level playing field between many delegations, particularly North-South, and South-South. Other major obstacles are mutual misunderstanding and a lack of trust, above all between industrialised and developing countries.
The European Capacity Building Initiative (ECBI) aims to reduce and overcome these limitations and obstacles through a number of capacity- and trust- building activities, subsumed under three complementary integrated Programmes: a primarily trust-building Oxford Fellowship Programme with an informal (senior level) exchange of institutional and procedural knowledge; a Workshop Programme to enhance negotiating skills; and a Policy Analysis Programme to enhance analytic capacity. The core of the ECBI is focused on collaborations with European and developing countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia - including the regional leaders South Africa and India - and the Group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Outside these core regions, there is also participation from Brazil and China, as well as from OECD non-Annex B 'Advanced Developing Countries' (ADCs), such as Mexico and Turkey.
FIELD Related Activities
Regional COP 13 Preparatory Workshop for LDC Climate Negotiators in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 26-28 September 2007
FIELD assisted the European Capacity Building Initiative's East African regional workshop, giving presentations on Post-2012 issues and issues on the upcoming COP and COP/MOP agendas for Bali.
Presentation: Post-2012 Issues under the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol & Upcoming Issues for COP 13 and COP/MOP 3
Pre-COP Workshop for Least Developed Country (LDC) Climate Change Negotiators, 24-25 November 2005
FIELD and IIED hosted a Workshop for Least Developed Country Delegates on Negotiation and Implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The workshop was held in Montreal, Canada, immediately prior to the international climate negotiations that began on 28 November 2005 (UNFCCC COP-11 and COP/MOP1). The event provided approximately 25 LDC negotiators with background information on the substantive issues on the negotiating agenda for COP-11 and COP/MOP-1, and engaged negotiators in a series of briefing exercises and negotiating skills training exercises, intended to better prepare them for the two weeks of negotiations that followed.
Pre-COP Workshop in Montreal, November 2005 (from left, FIELD Lawyer M.J Mace; Lobzang Dorji, Bhutan; Tomi Akanle, FIELD Intern).
South and Southeast Asia Regional Workshop on Climate Change Negotiations, 30-31 October 2005
FIELD presented at a two-day regional workshop, 'Climate Change Negotiations in South and Southeast Asia', held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The workshop bought together 40-45 officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Participants discussed potential impacts of climate change and adaptation options in the region, as well as issues related to the upcoming climate change negotiations at the Eleventh Conference of Parties (COP11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, to be held in Montreal, Canada in December 2005. Bangladesh will lead the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group in these negotiations. The workshop was jointly organised by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF), Government of Bangladesh (GOB), the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and the International Institute for Environmental and Development (IIED). It was co-sponsored by the European Capacity Building Initiative (ECBI), British High Commission (BHC), Dhaka, and Department for International Development-Bangladesh (DFID-B).
To see FIELD's presentation click here.
