Capacity Building to Address Climate Change: The Case of Bangladesh

What lessons can countries like Bangladesh learn from the past experience in capacity building for climate change
under the bilateral and multilateral agencies? What is the experience in Bangladesh? Who are the main actors? How
can it be done better? A review of the past experience by development agencies shows that their efforts were mostly
ad-hoc, short term consultancy-driven donor-funded initiatives, which left no 'system' of sustainable capacity
behind in these countries. The experience of Bangladesh in climate change capacity building, which is of utmost
importance for an extremely vulnerable country, is also reviewed. Though Bangladesh has initiated a plethora of
climate change-related policies and strategies, the focus on building sustainable capacity is not there yet.
However, the Paris Agreement offers a potentially new paradigm of capacity building, with new opportunities
at national and international levels. In response many countries, including Bangladesh, in their submissions to the
UN Convention Secretariat emphasized the need for building such capacities for implementation of the Agreement.
How can this new paradigm be realized both nationally and globally? This paper proposes a framework of capacity
building, with elements of a sustainable capacity system, such as a capacity building mechanism under the
UNFCCC, role of universities as the central hub of capacity building, multi-level networks/partnerships, and
sustainable financial support.