Credit: Impulsouth

Recording

Organizers

This session was co-hosted by Paris Committee on Capacity-building and Mediators Beyond Borders International.

Background

Established as a UNFCCC constituted body at COP 21 in 2015, the Paris Committee on Capacity-building (PCCB) addresses current and emerging gaps and needs in implementing and further enhancing climate-related capacity-building efforts in developing countries, including with regard to enhancing the coherence and coordination of these efforts. Since 2019 the PCCB also serves the Paris Agreement. The PCCB fosters collaboration between actors at all levels, strengthening networks and partnerships to enhance synergies and promote knowledge- and experience-sharing. Through its platform for capacity-building guidance and its communication tools, the PCCB facilitates access to information and knowledge for enhancing climate action in developing countries and for measuring progress on capacity-building to ensure continuous improvement over time.

Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI) seeks to bring conflict management and peace skills to organizations and communities so that they can work thorough conflict and decision situations constructively and pluralistically. MBBI projects are initiated and designed in partnership with local community organizations.  They draw on a wide range of modalities, platforms, and tools, including systems thinking, process and training design, mediation and dialogue, restorative practices, trauma, community development and organizational behavior.  In multi-party contexts, MBBI members have used Open Space Design, particularly in situations that are both complex and controversial.

At COP 27, the PCCB launched its technical paper ‘Enhancing the ownership of developing countries of building and maintaining capacity for climate action’, which identifies experiences, good practices and lessons learned related to enhancing the ownership of developing countries of building and maintaining capacity for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The paper found South-South cooperation to be an effective modality for capacity-building for climate action that fosters country ownership, including at the national and local levels with the participation of Party and non-Party stakeholders and identified a number of good practices in this area.

Similarly, the 6^th UNFCCC Capacity-building Talk, organized in May 2023, highlighted that South-South cooperation can play an important complementary role to North-South cooperation in enhancing capacities in developing countries to implement effective climate action.

Objectives

• Building on the above-mentioned PCCB and UNFCCC resources on country-owned and South-South capacity-building, the event aimed to gather, explore and discuss examples, good practice and challenges of fostering country ownership through South-South capacity-building.
• Through the applied Open Space Design (OSD), the event provided a space and platform for participants to create their own organic and emergent agenda related to the overarching theme ‘Fostering country ownership through South-South capacity-building’.
• The annual Capacity-building Hub serves as a major opportunity for the PCCB to directly engage with a wide range of capacity-building stakeholders and gather their views and perspectives. The event thus dedicated to foster shared learning among participants and to directly inform the work of the PCCB, such as its annual recommendations to the COP and the CMA and its work at the regional level.

Structure

Speakers

Key Outcomes

• Enhanced participants’ awareness of South-South capacity-building as a key modality for enhanced country ownership. 

• Fostered shared learning by allowing participants to share experiences, knowledge, stories, questions, interests, and concerns.   

• Enabled the PCCB to identify concrete examples, good practices, lessons learned and challenges with regard to fostering country ownership through South-South capacity-building, which will inform its future work and recommendations to UNFCCC Parties,  

• Enabled the PCCB to recommend relevant resources, identified at the event, for publication on the capacity-building portal managed by the UNFCCC secretariat.

Resources 

Presentation slides

PCCB Technical Paper ‘Enhancing the ownership of developing countries of building and maintaining capacity for climate action’

6th UNFCCC Capacity-building Talk ‘Building capacity for climate action through South-South Cooperation’