Context

Capacity-building is fundamental for developing countries to achieve the objectives of the Convention and the Paris Agreement. More than developing practical skills and capabilities, capacity-building is about empowerment and building leadership and agency among individuals, organizations and societies. The capacity-building framework for developing countries highlight the importance of promoting active participation of a wide range of stakeholders in climate capacity-building, including governments at all levels, national and international organizations, civil society and the private sector. Capacity-building activities should also take a whole-of-society approach and include marginalized actors and communities.

Stakeholders involved in the UNFCCC process emphasize the importance of capacity-building initiatives reaching beyond the public sector, which commonly is the key recipient of capacity-building support. The need to better target disadvantaged groups and vulnerable communities, including women, children and youth, local and indigenous peoples, the elderly and people with disabilities, is also frequently pointed out. Reaching stakeholders at local level is pivotal to empower key actors and ensure local ownership and leadership, which makes for more effective and sustainable climate capacity-building. This session will explore how we can ensure better access and make capacity-building more inclusive, vertically as well as horizontally.

This interactive, virtual event will be the third of the Capacity Building Talks, a public event series by the UNFCCC secretariat aiming to facilitate the discussion and provision of information among actors and stakeholders involved in climate capacity-building. The talks offer a space to exchange knowledge and share best practices, including with a view to strengthening the focus of and work on capacity-building within the UNFCCC process. 

Description/Objective

The 3^rd Capacity-building Talk aims to examine how capacity-building can become more accessible. It strives to provide insights and solutions for providers of capacity-building to better target and reach key stakeholders, and for recipients to better engage and get access to capacity-building support. It aims to bring together actors involved in capacity-building across the field to facilitate the sharing of key insights and best practices to effectively address the issue of access to capacity-building and consider how currently marginalized stakeholders can become involved. The session will directly contribute to the ongoing work on capacity-building in the UNFCCC process through promoting discussions and solutions on a topic of key importance to Parties and observers.

In addition to providing space for general reflections and perspectives on access to capacity-building, the session will specifically consider the following aspects:

1. Access to capacity-building across different sectors (e.g. public, private, civil society).
2. Existing structural inequalities, vulnerabilities and barriers that inhibit the access of certain marginalized stakeholder groups to capacity-building resources and funding, including barriers preventing gender equal access to capacity-building.
3. Designing context-specific capacity-building services and tools that take into account local cultures, particularly of vulnerable and marginalized stakeholders and groups, including linguistical barriers in terms of both which, and how, language is used.

After the event, participants should have increased their knowledge and understanding of how capacity-building access can be made more inclusive. They should have received practical information on how to target actors in need of capacity-building and how to design more inclusive capacity-building services, as well as how, as a recipient, to better engage with capacity-building providers. Following the event, a summary report will be prepared and published.

Programme

Panelists

	Alejandra Lopez Alejandra Lopez is currently the Finance and Capacity Building Advisor to the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) negotiating group under the UN climate change regime. She worked for almost 10 years for the Mexican public sector, including as Director of International Affairs of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change; Director for Climate Change at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Director for Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. In those capacities, she was also a negotiator on behalf of Mexico to the UNFCCC process between 2004 and 2015. Prior to her current position, she was Team Leader to the Support Unit of AILAC.
	Robert Tippmann Robert Tippmann has worked for more than 20 years in the field of environmental finance and low-carbon and climate-resilient development – including for a leading climate change services provider and with previous assignments with international, bilateral and research organizations. He is Co-founder of Climatekos, a climate action project and programme developer and environmental finance solutions provider, and serves as Chairman of the German Emissions Trading Association.
	April Nishimura April Nishimura has a deep expertise in capacity building with marginalized communities. April is the Director of Capacity Building at RVC (Rooted in Vibrant Communities) in Seattle, USA. In this role, she supports grassroots organizations led by people of color, immigrants and refugees to fulfill their communities dreams.  She is the lead author of “Transformational Capacity Building,” which outlines the key principles to using capacity building to meaningfully change power dynamics and access to resources for marginalized communities. She is on the board of Training Resources for the Environmental Community and on the board of the international human rights organization UUSC, which focuses on supporting grassroots solutions to climate forced displacement.
	Syeda Hadika Jamshaid Syeda Hadika Jamshaid is a Climate Change Policy Specialist at the Ministry of Climate Change within the Government of Pakistan.