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In the run-up to the Conference of the Parties (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, the governments of Indonesia and the East African Community participated in negotiation trainings to increase capacities of climate change negotiators and country delegations.

With the goal to adopt the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP), informally known as the Paris “rulebook”, and the modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPGs) for the Enhanced Transparency Framework, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland was eagerly awaited by the international climate community. With the significance of this conference, the governments of Indonesia and the East African Community participated in negotiation trainings to increase capacitates of their negotiators and delegations.

In Indonesia, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) supported by the project “Strengthening Climate Governance of Indonesia for Implementing the Paris Agreement”, funded by the Federal German Environment Ministry (BMU) and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH), hosted a 2-day climate negotiation training for junior negotiators, 13 and 14 November.

The training commenced with an introduction to the structure and process of climate negotiations. Thereby, participants learned that both formal negotiation sessions in plenaries and contact groups as well as informal conversations during coffee breaks are essential for finding an agreement. The session on key negotiation groups allowed the thorough and practical examination of the concepts “position” and “interest”.

A second training block focused on negotiation content: A representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented the topics to be targeted at Katowice and the current challenges. This was followed by in-depth sessions on the four negotiation streams mitigation, adaptation, means of implementation (MOI) and transparency presented by the respective lead negotiators of KLHK.

Being equipped with the necessary key knowledge, the attendees obtained negotiation competencies during a “mock negotiation” agreeing on a decision on establishing a fund for capacity development on transparency.

In Eastern Africa, more than 40 public and private stakeholders from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Burundi took part in the Pre-COP24 negotiators’ forum in Nairobi. The forum’s aim was to prepare participants for COP24 in Katowice by strengthening their knowledge on carbon pricing, carbon markets and their interlinkages with transparency, accounting and climate finance.

The workshop was organised by GIZ Carbon Markets Project in Uganda on behalf of the BMU together with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Regional Collaboration Centre (RCC) Kampala and the Secretariat of the East African Community (EAC).

During the workshop, participants had the opportunity to enhance their technical capacities on general rules, procedures and processes within the UNFCCC negotiations framework. They further had an in-depth analysis of relevant articles about carbon mechanisms within the Paris Agreement (Article 6.2 cooperative approaches, 6.4 sustainable development mechanism and 6.8 non-market mechanisms). To complement the exercise, the interlinkages of Article 6 and Article 4 on accounting, Article 9 climate finance, as well as Article 13 on transparency were discussed.

The participants’ workshop discussions informed the East African regional consultations on climate change. They also fed into the African Group of Negotiators position paper on carbon markets during COP24 in Katowice.