The Group of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the International Climate Policy: Evolution, Achievements, Prospects

Global climate change is one of the main challenges of our time. Rising temperatures threaten the stability of the ecological, socioeconomic, and political systems of the world’s nations. Countries of the Global South suffer the greatest material losses due to climate change, without having a significant impact on it. The high vulnerability of the LDCs group to climate change, together with social and economic backwardness, population poverty, and lack of means for adaptation, determines the special rank and status of the group in international climate policy. The LDCs group acts as a single actor in it. During more than 30 years of the LDCs’ climate policy, the adoption of a number of important documents and the creation of structures, fundamental to the international climate policy, have been established. At the same time, there have been major transformations in the process of adaptation and decarbonization of national LDC structures. The purpose of this paper is to show the role of the LDCs group in the formation of the UN climate agenda, institutional structures, and international mechanisms, as well as to assess the current national climate policy based on the regulatory documents adopted in the LDCs to characterize the features and main directions of these countries’ domestic climate policy. The methodological framework of the research is based on the structural-analytical and comparative approaches. The main objective is to study the LDCs group’s climate policy trajectories, highlight the stages of its evolution, and assess the climate efforts of individual countries. Policy initiatives of LDCs played a direct role in the formation of climate funds (AF, GCF, LDCF, etc.), the LDC expert group, and national programs and plans for states’ adaptation to climate change. Therefore, it is concluded that there are two stages in the development of LDCs’ climate policy; it is assumed that international mechanisms for adaptation and decarbonization can become instruments of economic and technological modernization of LDCs and their achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.