Climate change is one of the most complex issues addressed by humanity. Its cause and impacts have profound implications for almost all aspects of sustainable development, including many of the challenges already being addressed at the global level such as poverty, energy access, agriculture and food security, health, biodiversity conservation, forest management, and combating desertification. It is not surprising, therefore, that negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are particularly challenging for negotiators and policy makers. The negotiations move at a fast pace, constantly throwing up challenging new issues that need to be rapidly understood and responded to.

Developed country negotiators and policy makers have access to considerable analytical capacity, from individual expertise on negotiating teams and input from specialized research institutions. In addition, many of them have access to pooled resources through regional or interest groupings such as the European Commission, or the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

However developing country negotiators, particularly from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), often lack access to timely, quality analysis that takes their specific concerns and perspectives into account. This affects their capacity to be proactive in submitting proposals that reflect their concerns, and to assess and respond to proposals presented by other countries. Besides exacerbating conditions in developing countries (when their concerns are not adequately addressed in global policy), this state of affairs runs the risk of impeding progress in international negotiations, as developing country negotiators choose to play safe by sticking to entrenched positions rather than exploring possibilities for compromise.

The LDC Paper Series aimed to respond to the information and analysis needs of the LDC Group by providing timely and relevant information and policy analysis to the LDC Group, for use in the UNFCCC negotiations. By doing so, the project enhanced the negotiating capacity of the LDC Group and helped promote the interests of poor and vulnerable countries in the negotiations. The process of producing the papers under the series also aimed to build capacity in the group, by involving members as co-authors along with international experts.

Key outputs this project produced:

• Up to 10 demand-led policy papers on topics articulated by the LDC core group.

CDKN funding: Up to £140,000 (depending on the number of papers produced)