Tackling climate change: Contributions of capacity development

Climate change is not a new issue. The risks associated with climate change were already a topic of discussion at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992. However, only after another 15 years climate change has now gained its rightful place at the top of the (development) policy agenda. For this to happen it took numerous UN climate conferences, the release of Al Gore's global warming documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth', the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and finally the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Now, governments are under pressure to agree a new and effective climate regime for the time after the end of the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. Germany has tabled an ambitious reduction offer for such a post-2012 agreement. The Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) began funding numerous climate-change mitigation and adaptation projects in its partner countries as early as 1993, and has substantially increased the resources available for this area of work since then. Other government departments - such as the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) - are providing further funding. This year, Germany became the first country to earmark a share of the profits from the auctioning of emission certificates to support climate projects in newly industrializing and developing countries. The challenges facing the developing countries and international cooperation are immense. Most of the poorer developing countries have played no part in causing climate change, but will nevertheless be exposed to its catastrophic impacts. Apart from the developed countries, also large newly industrializing countries with legitimate interests in economic growth, such as China and India, will have to increasingly decouple their resource consumption from economic growth if climate change is to be kept in check.

At GTZ, they can draw on many years of experience in more than 100 countries in sectors that are now the key to effective climate change mitigation: energy, transport, buildings, industry, waste management, forestry and agriculture. Building on these experiences, and with forward-looking ideas and strong alliances, they support clients and partners in their endeavours to tackle climate change. In doing so, the emphasis is on implementation, with a focus on results and on building the requisite capacities partner countries to achieve them.

Climate change is firmly anchored on GTZ's agenda as a rapidly expanding field of work. This brochure provides an overview of their work in this area and their strategies and services, illustrated with numerous examples of their projects.