At the heart of the ecbi is an Oxford-based Fellowship Programme for climate negotiators and other stakeholders directly involved in the UNFCCC process from the participating developing countries. Its primary purpose is to build trust and exchange procedural and institutional knowledge both among the Fellows ('South-South trust-building'), and between them and their European colleagues ('North-South trust-building').

The North-South trust building - Oxford Seminar

The Seminar enables the Fellows to find out how climate change issues are managed by European governments, and provide an opportunity to exchange views in an informal and non- confrontational setting. They also enable the European partners to discover and better understand the situation of their developing country colleagues - one of the reasons why the ecbi is not just a capacity-building initiative by Europeans, but also for Europeans. The Seminar is an annual, 3 day event hosted on academic grounds of Oxford and it usually takes place in the first week of September. Participation in the event is exclusive