In March 1994, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force, committing its parties to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
To achieve this objective, developing country parties to the Convention have been offered support, mainly in the form of technology transfer, financing and capacity building.
For the most part, this support has been channelled through, and put into practical use by, institutions in developing countries – from governmental and para-governmental entities, to non-governmental organisations and research centres.
Overall, developing country institutions play a key role with regard to achieving the objectives of the Convention and limiting the rise in global temperatures.
But over the past two decades, the strengthening of developing country institutions has received
relatively little attention with a distinct paucity of tools and advice focused on strengthening institutional capacities.
In this new non-technical guide by the UNEP DTU Partnership, we describe the types of capacities needed, identify areas where developing country government capacities are generally limited, and provide recommendations for building these capacities.
Click to download the publication: Institutional capacities for NDC implementation.
Six main issues
Focus is on the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. With NDC implementation set to start in 2021, many countries are preparing for implementation, and lacking capacity is becoming an increasing problem.
In most countries, developing and developed alike, arrangements for NDC implementation are revealing gaps in institutional capacities. These gaps relate to six main sets of issues:
- Ability to launch and coordinate a whole-of-government process, incorporating contributions from all relevant governmental agencies and non-governmental parties as relevant.
- Capacity to integrate NDC priorities into sectoral and cross-sectoral programmes and projects, to ensure that the latter do not undermine efforts to achieve the former, or vice versa.
- Resources to train relevant government agency staff (and possibly non-government agency staff too), with a view to increasing the technical and managerial skills of these individuals.
- Ability to engage all relevant stakeholders through consultations designed to elicit their input, so that this can be taken into consideration, thus increasing buy-in from stakeholders.
- Competence to conduct a regulatory framework revision, to streamline and complement existing laws and regulations and strengthen related governmental processes and entities.
- Ability to monitor progress and report on it, making the best use of existing data collection mechanisms and strengthening related capabilities wherever needed.
For each type of capacity, UNEP DTU Partnership identify areas where developing country government capacities are limited, and provide recommendations for building these
capacities.