European Capacity Building Initiative

Latest publications

The international community has increasingly signalled a commitment to address gender issues in the global climate change negotiations, and in national-level implementation of climate action. This policy brief explores how this commitment has been put into practice, and identifies key challenges that still remain.
Author:
Margaux Granat, Emilia Reyes, and Bridget Burns
March 2020
New Guide to the Paris Agreement. Now includes the implementation guidelines adopted in 2018, and implications for domestic law and policy in developing countries.
Author:
Edited by Anju Sharma
March 2020
At the 2019 Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain, crunch issues – an unambiguous call for much higher climate ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, finance for the loss and damage caused by climate impacts, a fail-safe market mechanism that does not compromise environmental integrity, and credible financial contributions to enable action in developing countries – proved too difficult to resolve within the high-pressure, time-deficient confines of a COP, despite a two-day...
Author:
Anju Sharma, Axel Michaelowa, Aglaja Espelage, Jennifer Allan & Benito Müller
January 2020
The 2018 ecbi Pre-COP Training Workshop took place on 1 December at the Focus Hotel in Katowice, Poland. The Workshop was attended by 28 negotiators from least developing countries (LDCs), who were attending the 24th Conference of Parties (COP24) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The workshop, which was attended by the LDC Chair and a representative of the Polish COP Presidency, included sessions on LDC Group priorities for COP24; the Conference agendas; climate...
December 2018
The 2019 ecbi Pre-COP Training Workshop took place on 30 November at the Weare Chamartin Hotel in Madrid, Spain. The Workshop was attended by 19 negotiators from least developing countries, who were attending the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
December 2019
What makes it so difficult to reach a deal on market-based cooperation under the Paris Agreement?
Author:
Axel Michaelowa, Aglaja Espelage & Benito Müller
December 2019
A pilot Regional Workshop for the Caribbean, on 30 and 31 October 2019 in Tobago, was attended by 17 participants from the region. Sessions, mostly led by senior negotiators from the region, were held on the politics and science of climate change, loss and damage, mitigation and the NDCs, climate finance, the enhanced transparency framework, and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Mock negotiation sessions also took place, to give the trainees a chance to practice interventions in a formal UN-...
October 2019
The governance arrangements for the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage and its Executive Committee have been contested since the conclusion of negotiations on Article 8 of the Paris Agreement. Which supreme body – the Conference of the Parties (COP), the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA), or both – is / are responsible for guiding their work? This brief addresses legal and practical aspects of the governance debate.
Author:
Doreen Stabinsky
November 2019
What's holding up the Article 6 negotiations? Can differences be resolved at the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change? This policy paper explains the crunch issues in Article 6 negotiations in generally accessible language. It sheds light on the key differences between negotiating Parties on the eve of COP25 in Madrid. Understanding the issues and Party positions is a key step to identify solutions in these highly political and technically complex...
Author:
Axel Michaelowa, Aglaja Espelage & Benito Müller
November 2019
The 2019 Oxford Seminar took place from 11-13 September 2019, in the Oxford Town Hall. It was preceded by the ecbi Fellowship Colloquium, attended by 23 senior negotiators from developing countries (two participated virtually), from 9-11 September. They were joined by 20 senior negotiators from Europe for the Seminar. Opening the Seminar, the Lord Mayor of Oxford, Craig Simmons, described efforts to address climate change, including through declaring a climate change emergency in the city.
September 2019

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