Full project name: Supporting civil society to strengthen national climate change agendas and institutional capacity in Latin America to influence the new global climate agreement

This project sought to support the Latin American Platform on Climate (LAPC) to develop national dialogue processes between governments and civil society, with the aim of strengthening policies on climate change.

The report on the Status of Public Policy on Climate Change in LAC published by the LAPC in 2012, concluded that:

1. “In most countries in the region, relatively important steps have been taken in recent years, in policy-making. However, there is a major deficit in implementation of these governance measures”.

2. “Climate policies are only weakly integrated or coordinated with other sector policies or macroeconomic policies. This substantially affects and weakens the impact that governmental policies on climate change can make in scenarios where development policies are going the opposite direction”.

3. “In political terms, the issues of climate change still occupy a marginal position on the domestic policy agenda in countries of the region”.

In this context, the project proposed to encourage participatory processes in five countries in which civil society and decision-makers (including national delegations on climate change) work together to define priorities, needs and actions that can strengthen their national climate agendas. These agendas -  in turn - have allowed the national governments to have stronger domestic policies and consequently stronger positions to influence in international negotiations, importantly at the UNFCCC COP21 in Paris in late 2015.

In preparation for setting new strategies, the LAPC project team held a regional Action Lab bringing together actors from civil society and government from 9 countries in Latin America. The Action Lab comprised a 3-day participatory workshop, where outputs informed the design of the national processes. Following the Action Lab, proposals were submitted by the country delegations and five of them were selected and implemented: Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Paraguay.

Read the LAPC’s Blog for more information.

CDKN Funding: £134,167