Published by
WRI
Year
2016

How to Strengthen the institutional architecture for capacity building to support the post-2020 climate regime (Working Paper)

This paper focuses on how to improve the institutional architecture under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Convention) aimed at or involved in building the capacity of developing countries to address climate change.

The post-2020 international climate regime will require all countries to significantly scale up their efforts to reduce emissions, while at the same time increasing their resilience to the impacts of climate change. Despite this common challenge, however, countries are not all at the same stage of development, nor do they have the same levels of capabilities. This reality must be taken into account when building a low-carbon and climate-resilient world in an equitable way. In order for the new international climate agreement to be universal, effective capacity building is vital for enabling developing countries to contribute to the global effort to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

To do this, this paper starts by identifying what is currently in place under the Convention to support capacity building and examines the gaps in the institutional architecture. The paper then explores various options to address these functional gaps while leveraging what is already in place in the Convention. Finally, the paper makes a set of recommendations for key elements to be included in a new article on capacity building in the new international climate agreement, including how to enhance the institutional architecture for capacity building in the post-2020 climate regime.