Opinion: How to build capacity for climate-resilient development

[Kimbowa Richard]

Capacity building is an ongoing process through which individuals, groups, organizations and societies enhance their ability to identify and meet development challenges like climate change.

Climate resilient development is about communities resisting, absorbing and recovering from the effects of hazards in a timely and efficient manner, preserving or restoring their essential basic structures, functions and identity

Climate change is a major threat to all aspects of human development. The poorest and most vulnerable communities are already experiencing the impacts of climate change in across the world especially in the Least Developing Countries and small Island States.

The need for capacity-building to assist Parties to the UNFCCC, especia...,
to respond to climate change has long been recognized in the Convention’s work on such issues as technology transfer, national communications and funding.

However, though capacity building should be looked at as a form of ‘readiness’ to climate resilient development, how it is planned by the various agencies needs to be more coordinated, sustainable and relevant to the target groups in the effected countries.

Finance is the taken as the panacea to address the rest for example through the UN FCCC Adaptation fund. But I think that provision of finance per se cannot be a ‘silver bullet’ for capacity building without the support of the other components. In other words, we need to think deeper and try to answer a number of questions

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