Given the UNFCCC’s encouragement for all willing Parties to come up with national climate mitigation action plans (known as INDCs) in advance of the COP21, low emission planning was much on delegates’ minds.

At the Africa LEDS-sponsored side event in Paris, delegates were joined by Marta Torres, an expert from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, who has spearheaded an initiative over the past three years to bring the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (‘MAPS’) methodology, first developed in South Africa, to Latin America. This South-South learning initiative has spurred low emission development plans (and has helped lay the groundwork for INDCs) in Chile, Colombia and Peru. Ms Torres reviewed the lessons learned from those processes, with a view to testing the appetite for similar processes in other parts of Africa.

“MAPS processes have really been focused on building the capacity for analysis [in Latin American countries] to provide robust information to decision makers,” Ms Torres said. “This has not been through a ‘normal’ capacity building approach, but through learning by doing.” Ms Torres explained that in Latin America, professional teams led the process of establishing the baseline greenhouse gas emissions for each economic sector, with the diverse input of relevant stakeholders, and this eventually led to the production of different mitigation options for government policy-makers to consider. “We [experts] co-produced knowledge with local stakeholders – research teams of 30-100 people were meeting hundreds of stakeholders from government, civil society, labour unions and so on.”

What emerged from this consultative process was “a new data set, which was much more accurate and tailored” she said, “Models were developed from scratch – and eventually the country teams were left alone to get on with it! These processes inadvertently became the foundations for INDCs, because the stakeholder engagement process meant everyone involved in INDC was already invested.”

Participants in the Africa LEDS Platform dialogue asked: ‘Could the MAPS experience offer useful lessons for other African countries?’ and ‘Given the formulation of INDCs by so many African countries in the run-up to the Paris COP, what would be the next, critical steps for implementing INDCs?’ Discussants concluded that they and other African stakeholders would have to pay special attention to:

Development. African countries are among the lowest per capita emitters in the world and have pressing development needs, so low emission development strategies will not gain traction unless they are development-led. For instance, a discussant from the Democratic Republic of Congo said, his country’s overarching development goal is a ‘per capita income explosion’ so any effort to drive forward a LEDS must happen in this context. We need to frame LEDS with the Sustainable Development Goals and their targets. These include gender impacts and opportunities for women to benefit from LEDS, and how they fit into LEDS or broader planning.

Gender and social inclusion. Ana Rojas of IUCN’s Global Gender Office (known as the GECCO program) explained that her team aims to increase women’s share in the benefits associated with mitigation actions. Climate Change Interaction Plans support governments to identify the major gaps regarding gender impacts, and how these can be addressed through LEDS or broader development planning.

Resilience. Africa is already feeling the impacts of climate change. Activities to boost climate resilience to existing impacts as well as future climate variability must form a substantial focus of LEDS. “The link between mitigation and resilience is essential,” said Webster Whande, a CDKN analyst based in South Africa, who advises the Africa Group of Negotiators to the UNFCCC. Stephen King’uyu, Kenya’s national climate change coordinator and the Co-Chair of the LEDS Global Partnership, said, “We need to think outside the box because of levels underdevelopment in Africa. We need LEDS, however we need resilience-building more.”

The potential and limits of modeling. There is a role for modeling different LEDS scenarios at country level (and here the MAPS program has important lessons to share) but models need to be strongly ground-truthed by stakeholders to check their feasibility and lay the groundwork for implementation – the African LEDS Platform will shortly embark on a project to model LEDS opportunities in African countries and should follow this principle. “The models must be built on the needs of the common man,” added Stephen King’uyu, “…bringing top down knowledge and expertise, but ultimately always being focused on responding to bottom-up needs.”

Finance and technology. As well as modelling, the availability of technology and climate finance will be fundamental to progressing LEDS in African countries. One participant noted that his country had 33 NAMA ideas – and how to prioritise them? To some extent, prioritising mitigation actions could be a government’s choice, but it may also be driven by the availability of technology and financial support.

Join the Africa LEDS Platform to explore these issues in depth

These questions and more will be debated by the Africa LEDS Platform in its full, busy year ahead. In 2016, there will be many partnership opportunities on offer for members of the Platform; specifically, members can:

• Join a broad spectrum of policy-makers and practitioners working on LEDS in Africa;
• Get involved in exchanging knowledge and best practices with others;
• Access a wealth of materials;
• Take part in activities such as African and LEDS Global Partnership annual events;
• Access a world class technical assistance service – the REAL service – which provides 40 hours of pro bono assistance from international experts according to developing country governments’ requests;
• Training and development of LEDS capacity-building networks.

To join the LEDS GP (and as part of the joining process, to opt into the Africa LEDS Platform), click on www.ledsgp.org/join For more information on the Africa LEDS Platform, visit http://ledsgp.org/regions/africa/

The post FEATURE: Africa LEDS Platform eyes opportunities for 2016 appeared first on Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Reaching global consensus on climate change is far from easy, as shown by the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn. One of the main negotiating tracks (the Subsidiary Body for Implementation, or SBI, of the Convention) has, frustratingly, collapsed over rules of procedure after an eight-day impasse and will resume later this year.

Such failed attempts to talk about the big issues present a poor face to the outside world. It’s no wonder that, while 97% of scientists agree that climate change is human-induced (as shown in a systematic study of almost 12,000 peer-reviewed journal articles over a decade), far fewer non-scientists agree. So, what will it take to both re-start and accelerate progress in the global climate talks and restore their credibility to the world’s media and society at large?

CDKN has been working with the Meridian Institute to engage with key stakeholders from the UNFCCC process and establish some of the essential conditions for agreement. Together, we have co-hosted a series of dialogue events around consensus-building, to explore whether achieving consensus in the talks is desirable and doable, and how parallel processes outside the UNFCCC could build momentum for ambitious, collective action on climate change (whether they are national legislative processes or climate-related discussions in different global fora). Our side event in Bonn highlighted the experiences of both veteran and relatively new climate negotiators and contributes to a body of evidence around consensus-building that Meridian is compiling, to inform the UNFCCC.

Tony La Viña, a climate negotiator for the Philippines and facilitator for the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) negotiations, has been involved in the UNFCCC process since the very beginning. “You might expect me to be cynical after all these years,” he said – reflecting on many cycles of hope and frustration – “but I am still optimistic.”

Dr La Viña cited several reasons for his faith in the process and his conviction that consensus was possible. (He also noted that ‘consensus’ itself is an ambiguous concept, often understood as the ‘lack of formal objection’). First, he observed that “the most important element for success to be possible is preparation… consensus is not possible when parties do not have the right information”. Preparation can be difficult in some developing countries due to capacity issues, but when their negotiators are supported as much as possible, then better outcomes are likely. Second, he noted the importance of trusting why parties have taken their positions: “take this in good faith; they are taking a position for their own internal reasons and you have to respect that. If you don’t understand you won’t respect. Once you respect you will be more likely to move forward”. He also highlighted the role of good facilitation in negotiations, borne out by his years of experience as a facilitator, in which he has arranged break-out groups and numerous bilateral conversations to keep parties talking to each other. He concluded that “negotiating is a problem solving exercise” in which transparency and a trusted exchange of views will lead to brainstorming and a collective belief in reaching a resolution.

Finally, Dr La Viña suggested that parties would have much to learn from studying the form and direction of negotiations between 2007 (when the Bali Action Plan was signed) and 2012, when the Durban Platform for Action was agreed and taken forward. “We don’t give enough attention to the [UNFCCC] process itself”, he said.

In contrast to Dr La Viña’s many years of experience, Ethiopian negotiator Selam Abebe is a relative newcomer to the process. She has been part of the Ethiopian delegation for three years but feels as though she is just getting started, she said, thanks to the complexity of the negotiations. Like Dr La Viña, Ms Abebe recognised the huge challenges of reaching global consensus on tackling climate change but asserted that consensus was the correct goal – it is important to involve all countries in solving this global problem.

Although a comparative newcomer, many of Ms Abebe’s experiences and recommendations echoed those made by Dr La Viña and the audience, noting that preparation and trust are integral, but also that clear communication of positions is often a solution to deadlock in negotiations. She noted that some negotiators are ‘over diplomatic’ which can make their positions ambiguous (sometimes intentionally): “Sometimes parties state in a very diplomatic way or in a way that is questionable to the other parties…being clear could help a process.”

Overall, the event showed how trust and respect among negotiators requires time, resources and willingness to do research, get information and gain understanding. This includes the need to recognise and respect cultural differences. New negotiators are given little time to learn and need support to gain experience and skills required to achieve consensus. Training and mentoring programmes and a ready access to information would help—and a fundamental belief in the value of the process is key. With this attitude, it seems possible to believe that everyone can get something from the negotiations.

CDKN and Meridian are continuing their work to explore routes to building consensus. We will be hosting more events in the future, as well as producing publicly available papers on our research findings and recommendations.

In addition, you can find out about CDKN’s broader portfolio of work, including the provision of technical and capacity support to negotiators from the least developed and most climate vulnerable countries in the Negotiations Support part of the website. All these projects are focused on helping the leaders and negotiators of these countries to become informed, skilled, active, networked and influential actors in the international climate change talks.

• Background Paper by Tony La Vina – Consensus building in the UNFCCC
• Background Paper by Selam Abebe – Consensus building in the UNFCCC
• Summary of interviews – Examining negotiations and consensus building in the UNFCCC

Photo of Tony La Vina, Dean, Ateneo School of Government, The Philippines courtesy of CGIAR

The post FEATURE: Building consensus in the UNFCCC: what can we learn from experience? appeared first on Climate and Development Knowledge Network.