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Since the establishment of the Climate Convention and its recent Paris Agreement, capacity building has been considered as a fundamental prerequisite for achieving the goals of the climate regime. Various institutional architectures have been explored, while the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) established the Paris Committee on Capacity-Building aiming to address needs and gaps, along with promoting current, emerging, and further capacity-building efforts. Efforts to build capacity have been underway for decades but have largely failed in their objectives as they were not designed from, and rooted in, the local context. Drawing from the author's more than 40 years of personal experience in capacity building in Africa, this paper sheds light on the systemic challenges involved in building capacities. Arrangements that do not entail working on, or being led by, an agenda set by those in capacity needs are not, by definition, capacity mobilization or capacity building efforts. It is argued that capacity is tied to self-reliance and self-determination and thus ability to set and pursue the recipient's own agenda must be at the core of development narratives. Key policy insights Self-reliance and self-determination are at the core of capacity development. Therefore, countries need to set and pursue their own agenda by creating and following a bottom-up and inclusive development narrative. Intellectual, financial, and other important resources need to fall under the control of local leadership. Partnerships and networks of research centres think tanks and similar institutions in the South should be created and maintained to build capacities. Climate change, while a global issue, must be addressed based on a deep understanding of the local and national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five years down the road from Kyoto, the Protocol that bears that city’s name still awaits enough qualifying ratifications to come into force. While attention has been understandably focussed on the ratification process, it is time to begin thinking about the next steps for the global climate regime, particularly in terms of a deeper inclusion of developing countries’ concerns and interests. This paper begins doing so from the perspective of the developing countries. The principal argument is that we need to return to the basic principles outlined in the Framework Convention on Climate Change in searching for a north–south bargain on climate change. Such a bargain may be achievable if we can realign the policy architecture of the climate regime to its original stated goals of sustainable development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate change does not yet feature prominently within the environmental or economic policy agendas of developing countries. Yet evidence shows that some of the most adverse effects of climate change will be in developing countries, where populations are most vulnerable and least likely to easily adapt to climate change, and that climate change will affect the potential for development in these countries. Some synergies already exist between climate change policies and the sustainable development agenda in developing countries, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, transport and sustainable land-use policies. Despite limited attention from policy-makers to date, climate change policies could have significant ancillary benefits for the local environment. The reverse is also true as local and national policies to address congestion, air quality, access to energy services and energy diversity may also limit GHG emissions. Nevertheless there could be significant trade-offs associated with deeper levels of mitigation in some countries, for example where developing countries are dependent on indigenous coal and may be required to switch to cleaner yet more expensive fuels to limit emissions. The distributional impacts of such policies are an important determinant of their feasibility and need to be considered up-front. It follows that future agreements on mitigation and adaptation under the convention will need to recognise the diverse situations of developing countries with respect to their level of economic development, their vulnerability to climate change and their ability to adapt or mitigate. Recognition of how climate change is likely to influence other development priorities may be a first step toward building cost-effective strategies and integrated, institutional capacity in developing countries to respond to climate change. Opportunities may also exist in developing countries to use regional economic organisations to assist in the design of integrated responses and to exploit synergies between climate change and other policies such as those designed to combat desertification and preserve biodiversity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores an alternative approach to future climate policies in developing countries. Although climate change seems marginal compared to the pressing issues of poverty alleviation and economic development, it is becoming clear that the realisation of development goals may be hampered by climate change. However, development can be shaped in such a way as to achieve its goals and at the same time reduce vulnerability to climate change, thereby facilitating sustainable development that realises economic, social, local and global environmental goals. This approach has been coined the ‘development first approach’, in which a future climate regime should focus on development strategies with ancillary climate benefits and increase the capability of developing countries to implement these. This is anticipated to offer a possible positive way out of the current deadlock between North and South in the climate negotiations. First, elements are presented for an integrated approach to development and climate; second, the approach is elaborated for food and energy security in sub-Saharan Africa; and third, possibilities are outlined for international mechanisms to support such integrated development and climate strategies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviews how sustainable development was treated in prior assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and presents proposals on how it might be integrated into the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). There has been a steady, but slow, increase in the exposure and treatment of sustainable development in each subsequent IPCC assessment. However, much more remains to be done if the mandate provided in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to be met. The paper argues that the AR4 can take three practical steps in making the integration more complete. First, at the conceptual level, equity concerns should be made a more pervasive, even central, focus of the AR4. Second, at the analytical level, the examination of alternative development pathways begun during the TAR process needs to be continued and expanded. Third, at the operational level, the AR4 should deal with sustainable development in all its chapters rather than relegating it to a peripheral few, should broaden the base of expertise reflected in its panels of authors and reviewers, and should commission a companion special report on climate change and sustainable development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]