ABSTRACT
This chapter walks through all the language adopted at the original 1992 Rio Earth Summit on capacity building, and at the 23 Conferences of the Parties and meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies since then. Together it consists of the first comprehensive history of capacity building under the UNFCCC. Article 6 of the original Convention identified the issue and developed countries agreed to financially support capacity building in developing countries. Capacity-building efforts repeatedly emphasized in the Convention’s text included research, systematic observation and data sharing capacities; international research networks; climate-related education, training, and public awareness. The decades of meetings called for more coordination and support, and specified the kinds of work that was needed, but many of these same elements continued to be emphasized up to the 2015 Paris Agreement, when the issue finally gained a bit more attention. The Paris outcomes were important, and include a whole article on capacity building, notably the creation of a coordinating Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB) and the Capacity Building Initiative on Transparency (CBIT). As the normally consensual issue of capacity building become more contentious in Paris, politics, especially in terms of clashes between the Global North and the Global South, precluded a number of further developments.
