COP26 Catalyst for Climate Action recommendations for capacity building
COP26 Catalyst for Climate Action recommendations for capacity building
The COP26 Catalyst for Climate Action is a framework initiated by the UK COP26 Presidency and convened by Wilton Park, which brings together key stakeholders on capacity building in support of the Paris Agreement to discuss challenges and to catalyse action in four key thematic areas:
Participation in carbon markets
Dr Shehnaaz Moosa, Director of CDKN and Director at SouthSouthNorth, together with Mairi Dupar, Senior Technical Advisor at CDKN and ODI, were members of the Adaptation Action Group, which authored the adaptation-related recommendations addressed to the Conference of Parties (COP).
Their work also contributed to the overarching COP26 Catalyst Call to Action, which draws together some of the common themes on capacity building from the four Action Groups.
The work of the COP26 Catalyst Call to Action spanned an entire year running up to the Glasgow conference and involved regional consultations across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The COP26 Catalyst process was directly referenced in the climate conference’s final document, the Glasgow Climate Pact (draft decision -/CMA3, 13 November 2021); the mentions are shown in the text below. Significantly, a key aspect that CDKN was promoting in the Catalyst process was the need for significant, flexible finance to respond to country-led needs for capacity-building and this linkage was well captured by the Pact’s text:
The Wilton Park Secretariat has described the Call to Action as “a celebration of the transformative impact that effective capacity building can have, but also an impassioned plea to urgently ramp up the pace and scale of capacity building efforts.” The COP26 Catalyst for Climate Action had its own dedicated day as part of the Paris Committee on Capacity Building programme of events at COP26.
The day’s events to launch the COP26 Catalyst recommendations can be viewed here:
In the Glasgow event, United Kingdom government official Chris Shipley called the work of the COP26 Catalyst ‘instrumental’ in informing the next stage of UK-funded technical assistance to middle-income countries, the Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (PACT) programme.