Objective 

The 5th Capacity-building Hub’s Capacity-Building Day at COP28 will focus on effective capacity-building approaches. Despite years of engagement and support through capacity development, the effectiveness and sustainability of donor and other stakeholder interventions has been repeatedly questioned by partner countries, civil society, evaluations and academia. This is calling for donors and other stakeholders to rethink when, where and how to deliver capacity development, taking individual developing countries’ circumstances and needs into account. This day will provide a platform to highlight capacity development activities that have successfully led to greater climate-related action and ambition in developing countries.  

Topics 

The Effective Capacity-building Day will delve into the effectiveness of capacity-building efforts, with a focus on strategies for creation, delivery, and impact measurement. It emphasises the pressing need for enhanced evaluation, incorporating evidence-based effectiveness considerations throughout capacity-building efforts. As such, the Day will feature discussions and examples on how to enhance developing country capacities across a range of topics, including access to climate finance, climate services and data, working with non-governmental stakeholders, regional and triangular co-operation approaches, and monitoring and evaluation. These included exchanges of experiences, challenges and opportunities on capacity development for climate action in Small Island Developing Countries (SIDS); on participatory monitoring initiatives implemented in Indigenous Peoples and Local Community initiatives; knowledge exchange and shared learning to address the pressing challenges of capacity building in climate change through FAO’s EPIC team; on how AI-powered tools such as Large Language Models can enhance the effectiveness and impact of young climate advocates in international negotiations; presenting frameworks for measuring transparency capacity in climate change; enhancing the skills and capacities of youth in climate-related issues; highlighting the impact of gamifying climate education and decision support for students, business leaders, and policymakers using the World Climate and Climate Action Simulations; and on a platform for convergence of multiple government climate-related programmes.  

The sessions showcased effective, innovative and successful approaches and methods, for instance, to ensure country ownership over climate capacity-building and to promote co-ordination of approaches, and more generally to foster transformative ways in which different donors and other stakeholders work together to drive systemic change towards sustainability.   

The Capacity-building Day will bring together: 

• The OECD and the NDC Partnership showcased innovative models to support the transition towards a climate-resilient and low-carbon sustainable development pathway in the context of SIDS.  

• The Paris Committee on Capacity-building highlighted the issue of coherence and co-ordination in capacity building and launched the ICG booklets.  

• Conservation International brought representatives of indigenous peoples and local communities that implemented various projects linked to climate change; and that engaged in participatory monitoring through strategies and technology. 

• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presented the activities of its EPIC team, which conducts on-demand training and capacity-building workshops to address pressing climate-related capacity building needs.  

• GainForest and Youth Negotiators Academy highlighted the transformative potential of integrating generative artificial intelligence technologies into global climate diplomacy, specifically aimed at empowering and building the capacity of young negotiators. 

• The Greenhouse Gas Management Institute discussed how to enhance coherence and effectiveness of future capacity-building endeavours. 

• Iberdrola highlighted how to better build youth skills and capacities for them to achieve green careers that contribute to global climate objectives. 

• The Centre for Research on Sustainable Societal Transformation and the International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges presented recent research findings about simulation games that motivate real-world climate action. 

• The Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation put forward its innovative State Partnership Model for enabling closer co-operation between regional governments and civil society organisations. 

Capacity building efforts for climate action and ambition are the basis of what many donors and other stakeholders do to support developing countries. Many of these efforts are proven effective, yet there is not enough information on which approaches are worthy of replication, scale up and broader dissemination. The Capacity-building Day curated a sample of these initiatives as well as emerging good practices, knowledge and innovative capacity building practices. Across the sessions, several themes will help weave together new ideas and inspire actors to support each other, continue working together, across sectors and borders, to collectively shift towards a fairer, safer and greener future.  

Some of these issues included:  

• Donors and other providers of development co-operation are working to develop the capacities of SIDS through approaches that work, such as end-to-end project accompaniment, peer-to-peer exchange, or mentoring.  

• A central aspect to ensure successful capacity building is the systematic monitoring of progress, effectiveness, and impact of capacity-building efforts by adopting of well-planned and suitable monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices and tools for long-term and sustained capacity building.  

• Highlighting the importance of harmonised co-ordination among stakeholders, further enhancing coherence and effectiveness in capacity-building endeavour.