ecbi Publications
ecbi's Publications and Policy Analysis Unit (PPAU) generates information and advice for developing country negotiators that is relevant to the climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Developing countries often lack the economic and institutional capacity for policy analysis. If negotiators are unable to engage proactively by submitting proposals, responding to proposals from other States, and assessing the impact of global climate policy decisions on their individual States, progress in the negotiations can be hampered by the lack of alternatives and uncertainity. The differences in analytic capacity between developing countries and the industrialised world are often profound – developing countries lack support from organisations like the OECD, for instance, which has an immense apparatus producing thorough and focused reports, including direct advice on future policy responses to each of member country.
ecbi publications aim to be relevant to ongoing negotiations under the UNFCCC, timely, and trustworthy. PPAU works with negotiators from developing countries, sometimes through Editorial Committees, to identify UNFCCC issues where further analysis and policy advice is needed. Global experts are then teamed up with negotiators from devleoping countries to produce Policy Briefs and Discussion Notes. This partnership between experts and negotiators helps to ensure that the process of producing a Brief addresses the specific concerns of developing country negotiators; builds the capacity of developing country co-authors in policy analysis; and also builds ownership of the analysis.
For new negotiators, and for use in ecbi Regional and Pre-COP Training Workshops, PPAU produces Background Papers and a series of Pocket Guides. These generally provide a more basic analysis of issues for newcomers to the process, along with the background and history of the issue in the negotiations.
You can use the search function below or see all our publications in one page here
Last year was, by any account, an extraordinary year in the fight against climate change – not only at the international level with the Paris Agreement, but also for the ecbi.
First and foremost, support from the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) has revived our Training and Support Programme (T&SP). Managed by Achala Abeysinghe and her team at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), T&SP held its first pre-COP training workshop for junior LDC negotiators in Paris. We are very much looking forward to the future pre-COP and regional training workshops and support activities by the T&SP in Phase IV (2015-2020) of the ecbi.
We were also extremely proud about the fact that in the run-up to Paris, Achala was listed as one of the top 15 female climate champions by CNN, together with Christiana Figueres and Laurence Tubiana, and subsequently featured in a special edition on Vogue as a “climate warrior”.
Our Publications and Policy Analysis Unit, headed by Anju Sharma, has also delivered a number of important policy papers and analyses. Anju, who is also our lead analyst on in-country Enhanced Direct Access (EDA), presented a set of last year’s publications, Consolidation and devolution of national climate finance: The case of India and Engaging Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in developing countries: Enhanced Direct Access and the GCF Private Sector Facility, at a Fellowship Programme Ad hoc Seminar consultation with senior Indian policy-makers in New Delhi, to encourage a national understanding of EDA.
In addition to this, and apart from the annual Bonn Seminar and Oxford Fellowship and Seminar, the Fellowship Programme also organised a couple of Ad hoc Seminars co-hosted by the Chair of the Adaptation Fund Board and the co-chairs of the Standing Committee on Finance to facilitate a discussion between the members of these two bodies on the role of the Adaptation Fund in the new climate regime.
What is the future of adaptation financing under a new global climate agreement and beyond the UNFCCC?
What is the future of adaptation financing under a new global climate agreement and beyond the UNFCCC? What role will an actor such as the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund, which strengthened country ownership by pioneering direct access, play as a result of ongoing efforts to rationalize the global climate finance architecture with the full operationalization of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as a new major player?
These are some of the questions that were put to the participants of a discussion meeting convened by the Heinrich Bo?ll Foundation North America and the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi) on 7 December 2014 (during UN Climate Conference in Lima/Peru). The conversation was kicked off with this short presentation by Benito Mu?ller on the future of the Adaptation Fund.
With Parties aiming to set the parameters for a post-2020 global climate agreement during the COP 20 in Lima, half-way through the negotiations, this was an opportune time to discuss how the role and function of existing adaptation funding instruments might be shifting in the future with a special focus of the conversation on the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund.
On 5 March, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Secretariat published a Board Paper and Draft Decision on ‘Additional Modalities that Further Enhance Direct Access: Terms of Reference for a Pilot Phase,’ putting forward recommendations to the GCF Board on how to operationalise the ‘Enhanced Direct Access Pilot Phase’, which was agreed during the last Board meeting that took place in Barbados in October 2014. The Draft Decision is ‘to launch a Request for Proposal to countries through their national designated authority or focal point and public media to competitively select subnational, national, public and private entities for the implementation of 5 pilots with a total of US$ 100 million, including at least 2 pilots to be implemented in small island developing States, the least developed countries and African States’.
Enhanced Direct Access and the GCF Private Sector Facility
National and international finance is increasingly becoming available in developing countries to address climate change for both mitigation and adaptation. However, existing (domestic) arrangements for climate finance are often dispersed and fragmentary, and lack clear goals and strategies, therefore allowing for neither efficiency nor accountability. This ecbi Policy Brief by Anju Sharma, Benito Müller, and Pratim Roy examines the governance arrangements for climate finance in India, and proposes the creation of an Indian National Climate Fund to pool climate finance from different national and international sources, to channel it to the State and local levels. The Fund should seek to 'consolidate without centralisation', and to devolve decision-making on the use of climate finance to local governments. In addition to defining a common vision and principles for climate finance, such a National Funding Entity should aim for coherence with national development goals strategies, and integration across sectors; distributive justice, to ensure that climate finance reaches those who need it most, and that their needs are prioritised; and a balance between different thematic areas (such as mitigation, adaptation, capacity building etc.). It should also review progress continuously, and make mid-course corrections where necessary.
