Background

A key limitation of the UN climate change negotiations is the lack of a level playing field between delegations, both North-South, and South-South. Other major obstacles to successful outcomes are mutual misunderstanding and lack of trust, particularly between industrialised and developing countries.

The European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi) is aimed at overcoming these limitations and obstacles through a number of capacity and trust building activities, subsumed under two complementary integrated Programmes:

• a primarily trust-building Oxford Fellowship Programme with an informal (high level) exchange of views and ideas
• a Workshop Programme to enhance negotiating skills

Further information is available on a PDF from this link.

Management and Timeframe

Internal Management. The day to day running of the Initiative is managed internally through the two ecbi Lead Partners - who form an Executive Committee - each individually responsible for the running of one of the two ecbi Programmes:

• Workshop Programme: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, UK.
  Head: Dr. Achala Chandani Abeysinghe.
• Oxford Fellowship Programme: Oxford Climate Policy (OCP), Oxford, UK.
  Head and Director ecbi: Dr Benito Müller.

External Management. Strategic guidance and quality control is provided from outside the ecbi Membership by the participating government Partners. An Annual General Meeting - to be held in parallel with the UNFCCC sessions - is open to all the participating government Partners and is the main quality control instrument for the initiative. Strategic guidance for the content of the Initiative is given by a Steering Committee, co-chaired by two eminent people, from one of the European and one of developing countries participating in the ecbi.

Centrally Managed Activities. Communication with the target participants of the ecbi is crucial to the success of the initiative. Certain communication activities - such as the selection of participants for the Workshops and Fellowships - are most efficiently carried out at Programme level. Other centrally managed administrative activities are the provision of support to the ecbi Committees, organising the AGMs, producing the Annual Reports, supporting the independent evaluation process, and representational functions during the UNFCCC sessions, such as organising the ecbi Fellows Dinner.

Timeframe. After an initial one-year pilot phase (2005) and a two-year 'proof-of-concept' phase (2006-7), the ecbi is establishing itself as a longer-term European instrument for the sustained building of developing country negotiation capacity through a second Phase, launched in 2008 for completion in 2012.

Further information is available on a PDF from this link.