Anglophone African officials enhance their climate negotiating skills

A workshop in Dar es Salaam trained junior climate negotiators from Anglophone African countries.

News, 03 November 2016
Collection
UN climate change conference (COP22)
A series of pages related to IIED's activities at the 2016 UNFCCC climate change summit in Marrakech

Thirty officials from Anglophone African Least Developed Countries and other nations in the region attended a climate negotiation workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 14-15 September 2016.

The workshop was organised as part of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi) to help participants improve their negotiating skills ahead of the forthcoming UN climate summit. The 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is due to take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from 7-18 November 2016.

Most delegates at the ecbi regional training workshop were government officials who were new to the UN climate change process. They engaged in mock negotiations and learned about key issues.

The workshop featured presentations from experts from IIED, the Legal Response Initiative, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and ecbi. The delegates also heard from climate negotiators Richard Muyungi of Tanzania and Stella Gama from Malawi. 

In the short term, the training was designed to share information and build capacity. In the long term, it is hoped that participants will be equipped to actively engage in UN climate change negotiations.

IIED runs the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi) training and support programme in partnership with Oxford Climate Policy. Through the programme, IIED supports new negotiators from vulnerable developing countries. From 2015-20, the ecbi training and support programme will organise 13 regional training workshops and five pre-COP workshops.

Next: pre-COP workshop 

The next ecbi workshop will be a pre-COP workshop in Marrakech on 5 November. The workshop will gather junior delegates to prepare for the UN Conference of Parties. Participants will be drawn from states vulnerable to the impact of climate change, particularly the Least Developed Countries. 

The agenda for 2016 pre-COP workshop opens with a review of the priorities for COP22, presented by LDC Group chair Tosi Mpanu Mpanu and facilitated by IIED principal researcher Achala Abeysinghe.