Country coalitions can be as much in need of negotiating capacity building as individual countries in order to function as an effective group. The Group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) has great potential to progress in negotiating skills. To make its voice heard it must build up synergies between its members.

The Workshop Programme organises a number of capacity building workshops, namely:

• annual regional workshops:
  • South/Southeast Asia
  • West Sub-Saharan Africa
  • East and Southern Africa
  • Hispanophone workshop in Latin America
  All of these are open to both LDCs and non-LDCs in each region. Participants are drawn from UNFCCC delegations and also from mainstream development ministries


• an annual LDC pre-COP workshop

The Regional Workshops are meant to foster collaboration in the targeted regions as well as to mainstream the climate change issues by involving officials from mainline ministries. Moreover, they are not restricted to LDCs but open to all the countries in the regions to enable the regional negotiators to meet, exchange views, and if they wish, plan together.

The main purpose of the pre-COP Workshops is to support selected negotiators from LDCs to gain a better understanding of the issues discussed at the COPs, as well as to be able to act more effectively as a group (e.g. by dividing tasks among the group instead of all of them to following the same negotiating track). The workshops also help to build negotiating skills through role-playing and practice sessions. While not meant to prepare negotiating positions - the prerogative of the countries themselves - the pre-COP workshops are intended to help build the skills and capacities to negotiate more effectively. Over time it is expected that negotiators will build up expertise in different issues being negotiated (over and beyond LDC specific issues).

The Workshop Programme also engages in post-workshop mentoring and networking of participants.

Further information is available on a PDF from this link.