Preparing Country Leaders for Climate Change Action with UNFCCC

One hundred and ninety-five Parties have signed the Paris Agreement in a commitment to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change. Countries submit and update nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to report efforts they plan to comply with this commitment. To ensure such efforts are fully consistent with goals of the UN Climate Change regime, Parties have identified a pressing need for reliable training on UNFCCC processes and methods of compliance. There are many challenges in developing and delivering such reliable training to country leaders. This chapter poses and tests a hypothesis that standard university educational methods combined with standard university expertise on climate change are sufficient to address the need for preparing country leadership for responding to the international challenges of climate change. It presents four tests of this hypothesis examining alternative capacity building approaches for guiding Parties to meet their climate action commitments. It demonstrates that university resources, when used outside the context of the traditional audience to prepare national leadership to address climate change, can foster strong educational instruments to drive international change and decision-making at a global scale. Achieving that must overcome multiple institutional and academic challenges in close cooperation with international partners. While universities are essential elements in the effort to prepare country leadership for responding to the challenges of climate change, a collaborative approach including an international governance partner and an organization with expertise in online education in an international setting offer a more successful model than acting alone.