European Capacity Building Initiative

ecbi provides sustained capacity building for climate change negotiators, to promote a level playing field between governments in the international climate negotiations. The Initiative aims to facilitate mutual understanding and trust – among developing countries, and between developing and European countries.

News

ecbi has published a Discussion Note on reimagining COPs and Climate Weeks. It is based on the premise that COPs have become “too big, too complex”. Their size is second only to the Olympics, with hosting costs of around USD 200 million, making them unaffordable for smaller countries to host. This scale is largely due to concurrent summits, side events, and country pavilions (in what a recent ecbi Report referred to as 'Climate Expos'). The Note proposes to shift most, if...

19 May 2025

ecbi convened a regional workshop for negotiators from the Caribbean region from 18-20 March in Tobago. The workshop, which was attended by 16 negotiators from 10 countries, covered key issues of importance to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the multilateral climate change negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Kishan Kumarsingh, Lead Climate Negotiator for Trinidad and Tobago and Head, ecbi Fellowship and Training Programme (FTP), said the goal of the workshop is to provide...

22 April 2025

ecbi has published a note, which summarises a series of Oxford Climate Policy Blog posts advocating for the formation of a Climate Solidarity Alliance (CSA) and implementation of Climate Solidarity Levies (CSLs) as a means of generating innovative and additional funding, in particular for climate-related loss and damage.

The CSA is envisioned as a partnership of national and sub-national actors who are willing to show solidarity with the poorest and most vulnerable to help them deal with climate change. A...

26 February 2025

On 12 February, ecbi Director Benito Müller made a presentation on Climate Solidarity Levies and Alliance at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, France. He spoke about the Climate Solidarity Alliance (CSA) proposal, which seeks to create a coalition of national and sub-national actors willing to implement Climate Solidarity Levies. Modelled on the French air ticket solidarity tax originally proposed by French President Chirac and Brazilian President Lula in 2005, the levies would seek to generate innovative funding...

20 February 2025