 Rwy'n nhw'n wneud, a ddweud â'u gweithio gyda'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae gennym ni Juliet Tunstall, a rydyn ni'n ei gweithiau eich cyfnod ddechrau a Gwysigol ar IID. Mae'n byw yw'n ddweud yw'n ei gweithio'n ddweud. Byddwn i'n gweithio'n gweithio ar y dyfodd ymgyrchu'n gweithio'n cyfasyddol i'r cymaint ac ymgyrch yn ymgyrchu, dwi'n rydyn ni'n ddweud. A ydych gyfan yna, dych chi'n fawr cyfanc mhunwaith i ddweud yn fgriddol, ac yn ymlaen i ddweud y Prifysgol Lundunwyl Ysgolwyr Cymru'n hynny o ein defnyddio byddugahol yma? Mae ddim bod i'n mynd i glyff yn burner, ond mynd i gwiseb yn wedi bod yn ymddangos. Ond oes eu byddwn ni'n gwneud na'r bod yn gwneud o'i parysbynu i ddweud a'r gwneud yna mwyaf gwybod pobl allan ymyddio. Felly mae'n ddim o'ch ffordd. Yn gwybod, rwy'n gobeitio eu gwahodd rwy'n gwahanol yng nghymru o Andy Norton, y dyfodol cymdeithasol sy'n gwneud y cwbl o'r gwahodd yr awdurdod. Roedd ddod. Ddod. Mae hi ddweud, Julia, a ddwy'n gweithio, a'r ffordd i gael eu panelol. A'r amlwgodd, Celine Mulhuck, rwy'n gweinidol hwnnw i fod yn ddweud. Rwy'n gweithio'r ddwy Andrew Norton, gyda'r YID. un o'r ffordd yng Nghymru fel ystyth yn ysgrifennu. Mae'r ffordd o'r Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i gael eu phirbydd. Felly, rydych chi'n gweld i'r E3G, ei ydych chi wedi'i gweithio i'r adegu ddysgu'r eventau, a'r IOD wedi'n adnod i'r ffordd â'r cyfrifennu sydd yn ysgrifennu. Mae'r i'r cyfrifennu sydd yn ysgrifennu sydd, ac rwy'n gael gan Ycodd, ac mae'n gyffredinol eich ddechrau Cymru yn ymgyrch yn ddefnyddio'r Llyfrgell, yn ddechrau'r Dacar Van Gledes. Yn ymgyrch ymgyrch ymgyrch a'r ddiwedd o ymgyrch yn Covid 19, yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ei wneud o'r pandemi, a mae'n fwy gwybod i'r syniad yw'r cyfrwyngun i'r Llyfrgell, i'r llwygol. Rhaid i gael y wahanol eich mynd i gael gweithio'r ysgrifennu ar y tofod y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth ac i gael eich gwendig hefyd. Green recovery, it's important that we see it in terms of tackling multiple challenges, not just climate, but also inequality, development and biodiversity loss. But to achieve that and to do a green recovery out of the pandemic effectively in due course, it will be critical that finance is equitable and resources flow to the least developed countries and other vulnerable countries and in sufficient quantity to fund that recovery and also support people in the crisis. But it's also absolutely vital that resources reach the grassroots, the front line of these crises of inequality, biodiversity loss and climate. There is also a trick involved making this work, which is that you have to be able to reach people who are in distress, particularly from the economic and livelihood impact of COVID-19 now. But also do so in such a way that you effectively build a green and resilient future in the longer term. So this is a considerable challenge, but a compelling one the world over a moment. Moving to this event, one of the things which is particularly important is to have effective capacity at the grassroots level. So we're very much looking forward to these thoughts about capacity, not just in a technocratic sense for implementation, but also capacity for leadership and capacity for agency. That's really the kind of capacity building we're talking about here. So, with those few words, I'm delighted to hand over to Salim, who will moderate today's session. Great. Thank you very much, Andy, for those words of introduction. It's a pleasure to be in one of our joint webinars, IID, ICAD once, and also be part of the London Climate Action Week for this year in this series as well. The topic we have today chosen to speak about is on capacity building, particularly in vulnerable developing countries, particularly least developed countries, but not exclusively LDCs. And I'll very briefly introduce our four excellent panellists, and if they can put their cameras on, and then I will go to them. The first one is Denise Love Dennis, who is with the Environment Protection Agency in Liberia. Secondly, we have Shanaz Musa, who is with the Climate Development Knowledge Network, as well as South South North based in South Africa. And then we have Susan Nandudu, who is from Uganda, a Kampala. And finally, Mizan Khan, who is my colleague in ICAD in Dhaka Bangladesh. The four of these panellists will be sharing their experiences in the realm of capacity building. So before I go to the panellists, let me just mention a couple of things in terms of how we would like to conduct this discussion. Firstly, I would like to have it in a conversational style, so I'll ask each of you the first question, which will be to introduce yourself a little bit more about what you do. And also share some of your experience, maybe one or two at the most, of capacity building, either receiving it or giving it and make it a personal experience. We'd like to know specifics of what you've done. If you can keep your answers to within three minutes, that would be good. That would give us a chance to come back again for some follow up questions. And I'm going to start the conversation with Denise Love-Denis. Denise, would you like to just share some of your personal experiences and tell us a little bit more about what you do yourself. Denise, please, go ahead. Thank you, Selim. Like you rightly put it, my name is Denise Love-Denis, and I work with the Environmental Protection Agency here in Liberia. And my involvement into capacity building dates back in 2018, when I first received an invitation to my focal point, Mr Benjamin Camel, to participate in the European Union capacity building initiative. That is the easy BF for short. So ever since then, there was a kind of interactive section that drew my attention, and I decided to join, there was a group section that has to do with capacity building, fun nights and everything. But then I chose capacity building because I believe capacity building is a bear rock for every developing nation. So as a young person coming up with interest in this climate change issue, I think that the issue of capacity building is key and it will help us reach up to some issues that we actually face in our country. So with this, it also serves as like a strengthening national capacity to enhance the transparency element that relates to the Paris Agreement. So that's where my interest came from. Excellent. Thank you very much, Denise. So we look forward to having you part of our Article 11 capacity building group in the least developed countries group. So in future, I hope you'll be able to contribute to that going forward. So let me now turn to Shanaz Musa, who has a lot of experience, not just in least developed countries, but across the world through the CDN program that her organization, South South North Organisers. Shanaz, would you like to share some of your experience and maybe give a little bit more of your own introduction as well. Yeah, thank you, Salim. I'm Shanaz Musa from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, which is a program that is run from South South North in Cape Town, South Africa. It's one of a few programs that we run. And what I'd like to just talk to is how we almost accidentally stumbled into capacity building. So we into the second phase of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, where there's a very strong focus on capability building, and we call it capability because of the legacy of the world capacity. Capacity has underpinning it a one directional flow. So it looks like workshops. It looks like training events. And what we do is quite different to that, where it's very much a peer to peer sort of engagement. And in our first phase of CDK in, the program then and the program now is completely demand driven. We went out and tried to ascertain what the demand was. And more often than not, it was demand for building capabilities in certain areas. And that's how we then evolve into what we are now, which is a knowledge-brokering capability building program. What we've learned in this phase of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, and in one of our other programs, which is the Southern Africa Climate Finance Partnership, is that the scoping of the program is very, very important. And often when you're putting in a funding proposal for a capability building on knowledge management program, you don't realize it can take up to six months to scope it properly. Where we actually learned a big lesson with the CDK in was that we had a three month inception, and actually our scoping phase took six months. And we had lots of engagement with our recipients and it was about laying the ground for what is the capability that needs to be built and how is it done in a mutual partnership way. So that one of the drawbacks of that was that we were behind a spend, but we had solid relationships, a solid understanding of what the capability needs were, and we now in the position where the implementation is just ramping up dramatically, and we will deliver the program to budget and to deadline. So I think that there's lessons for us as program implementers, but there's also lessons in this for the donors, who often want us to jump into a program and implement without laying that solid solid relationships and understanding down. So for me, I think in the years in the sector, it's what I've learned and the cold in it is the relationships that we need to build solidly. Thank you very much. Thank you, Shanaz. We'll come to lessons in the second round. So we just want to get a little bit more of an understanding of who our audience is in the room today. So great to learn how, if you've had experience in capacity building initiatives before and what type of role you have. So we have a majority of plurality of implementers, 45% participants, 32% observers, support at 30, and we have some others and none as well. So let's now move on to our third panelist who is Susan Nandudu from Kampala in Uganda. Susan, tell us a little bit more about yourself and share some experience in the capacity building arena that you have been involved in. Thank you, Salim, and thank you for having me. So my name, again, is Susan Nandudu and I am here in Uganda. I work with an NGO called the African Center for Trade and Development, which I lead. And I'll speak to you about the clock, which is the capacity strengthening for list to develop countries in adaptation to climate change initiative that was a 10 year capacity building initiative, which I was a part of. And I just want to emphasize 10 years. It started as far back as 2004. And the way it was organized or arranged was IID managed it, and we had 15 partners in the global south. So about three in Asia, and we had the others coming from Africa, West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa. It was a great learning opportunity, which, like Shana says, it didn't follow just a workshop format. The clock worked as a fellowship. So we worked as fellows, we had 15 fellows across all these regions. We met regularly, and we are speaking about capacity building in the era where climate change in Africa, for example, was not yet an issue. It was just emerging, the conversations beheld amongst a few people. And so, crack became such an opportunity to build knowledge amongst the individuals who are 15, but we used the training that we had on a regular basis to train others. So, because it was a program, we were able to hold several workshops in country, which were benchmarked on various trainings at the global level, who would meet to have training of trainers, who would meet to have short courses, who would meet every single year under the conferences of parties, of the UNF people see, and how you know that that's a great opportunity to learn. If you're going to see in the course you're effectively participating, you need capacity building, so that was a great opportunity, not to learn in a workshop setting alone, but to learn from others to to interface with processes of negotiations of policy making, and that has translated back home in all these countries where we participated. I, for instance, in my country, I sit on several government-led platforms around climate change. There's one on adaptation, one on first building, so ability to shape policies and also to influence others to learn, but also participate. I think I'll leave it at that for now. Great, thank you very much, Susan, and having known you from the beginning, I can see that you have become a capacity builder now in a big way. Thank you very much, and I'm very proud of you. Let me now move on to our fourth panelist, my colleague Professor Mizan Khan, who wears many hats, but I think a relevant hat here is also co-ordinates the LDC university's consortium on climate change, LUCCC, or Luck for short, which my centre in Bangladesh co-ordinates, and Professor Mizan is our, in charge of that. Mizan, would you like to maybe introduce yourself a little bit and then share some of your reflections on your experience? Let's start with experience. We'll go to reflections and lessons later. Thank you. In fact, for the last almost 20 years, my main cup of tea was capacity building in the form of teaching and research. Then when I joined ICAD last year as your deputy, my main cup of tea, again reinforcing, I'm trying to reinforce the image of ICAD as kind of what I call ICAD is a think-come-action tank with our main focus on capacity building. With this idea, and you know all that back about three years, Dr Selim initiated the establishment of the Luck with some university faculty members, and now Luck has become an official LDC programme of 47 governments. And we have about 15 members, member universities from South Asia, East West and Southern Africa, and we from Luck as a secretariat working, ICAD working as a secretariat. So we advise and facilitate, for example, the establishment of a capacity building research and capacity building platform under those universities in other LDC countries. In Bangladesh, let me share the experience personal that I have as the government ministry officials are transferable. So for the last 20 years, I have been serving as the lead negotiator on climate finance and I am kind of institutional memory. So at least a year, three to four times, we organise capacity building workshops for our government officials for climate negotiations. This is one thing we do. We have published also several, one book where Dr Selim is a co-authent capacity building published by Rauplis and several articles. We also organise peer-to-peer learning with government officials. ICAD has signed a memorandum of understanding and agreement with several of the ministries, including finance, planning, ERD, and we often organise learning hub events where we share our experiences, particularly focusing on capacity building in adaptation area. So these kind of are my main experiences in capacity building I will share later. Thank you very much, Mizan. So let me now go to the second round of questions and I'll mix it up in terms of who I go to next. Let me go to Shanaz. You shared with us earlier the experience of CDKN and SSN in the realm of doing things that then ended up with capacity building being the common thread and moving from the concept of capacity building to capabilities and relationships and peer-to-peer. So I'd like you to tell us a little bit about what you are going to do, but I stopped you. What kind of lessons do you think future programmes, particularly donors, funders, are thinking of investing in capacity building programmes might want to take on board. So a bit of lesson learning experience sharing if you don't mind. Shanaz. Thank you, Salim. So as I mentioned earlier, and I did get a bit carried away when I was, because it's very close dear to my heart, is the first lesson I think is that scoping is needed and that this needs to be accounted for. It needs to be built into budgets and donors need to be quite aware that while this is happening, there won't be any tangible outputs being delivered, but it will be more about building the relationship. So I think there needs to be a cognizance of that, and it needs to be reflected when budgets are being prepared and work plans and deliverables are being decided. Another lesson I think that we've learned is that capability strengthening is an iterative process. An example of this, and my colleague Mary Dupar very kindly shared it in the chat box, is a game that we've developed with the Ethiopian government, but just to talk you through the process of that so you get the feel for what this iterative process is. Look like how your program has to be number and adaptive and how the donors need to be cognizant of this and not hold you accountable to a very linear delivery model. So in CDKM phase two, the Ethiopian, the country program work will do there was around mainstream agenda and climate change. And gender was a priority agenda for government and CDKM was able to offer assistance through a local climate and gender expert on how best to improve the mainstreaming of this cross cutting issue into the climate change priority sectors, institutions and projects. So again, an initial scoping report explored the current situation across the main federal government institutions. This report was then used as an input to a workshop. So we'll see there's a scoping, there's a report, then there's a workshop. The workshop brought together several ministries of government as well as a number of departments within ministries that did not normally engage. So, for example, the gender and the planning departments again here, it's looking beyond what you normally do and opening up the circle and being adaptive. So this led to improve communication with parties intending to improve and it improved coordination. It further served as a launch board for the development of a gender coordination platform and CDKM is using this as an entry point to develop a gender resource pack that is responding to the capability building needs of government. This resource pack is going to be tested now in November at the training of trainers event and then from here we're taking this further into 2021. So this whole work takes long and you need to be adaptive and the process is very iterative. So for me, I think there's that those lessons that we're not chasing a linear process here. We need to be adaptive and we need to realize it's a complex process. Absolutely. Thank you very much. I think I got carried away again. No, no, it's always good to hear people speaking from the heart and with passion. And you make an extremely important point that the capacity building initiatives are very personalized. You are building the capacity and the capabilities of individuals. And so I'd like to turn to Susan now whom I've known for many years. And when we started working together when she became a clack fellow, I used to run that program in IID. She used to work for one organization. She's since been moving on and doing lots of different things and has increased both her own capacities and also helping others build capacity. So Susan, a little bit of, you know, reflection using your own experience of how over time you were able to improve enhance your ability to work with others in different organizations and government, non-government, different arenas. And how you navigate that over time as an individual person who is going up the capabilities ladder, if you like. Susan, please share some of your reflections. So it's been a pleasure working with you, Salim, and learning a lot from you. One of the learning they've carried is storytelling and still learning. We always said, you always told us that sharing stories is important. So how have I navigated the learning process? So I think for me built the passion for climate change for me and it rooted it in me that it's just a part of me wherever I go. Most people will know that anything I do is around climate change. And so at the beginning it was such a new area for me. I didn't understand what it was about. And because of the exposure I got deep and I could read a little more go to the World Bank or the exposure. Over time I realized that the capacity that was within me needed to be shared even beyond the programming that we had under CLAC. So I guess because it became a passion of mine, it became quite easy to even mentor others to always speak about it anywhere and anyhow. But I must emphasize that through the CLAC program, because it was a long-term program, the exposures with the various stakeholders, particularly government, opened doors to bring civil society. Remember the CLAC program was largely with civil society. So the civil society voice became a significant voice in the climate change conversations here in Uganda. And so we have been part and parcel of all the policy making processes and continue. Right now Uganda just launched the process of reviewing the NDCs today and we are part of the process. So I guess the core is that as the individual, the human capacity is developed, there is no limit to where that capacity can go and you carry it with you. So in the organization where I am right now there was no climate change work when I came and I was able to integrate it into the work and now we have a full program on climate action. I know several other CLAC fellows who have moved into spaces where they have influenced the institutions where they work to even attract funding into programming for climate change. So it's really critical to the capacity of the individual because it stands into other spaces. Thank you. Thank you very much Susan and I hope you continue to do this good work that you've been doing for so long. Denise, let me come to you now. You're the youngest negotiator from Liberia, I understand, and youngest amongst the panelists. And you've just started your career recently and you've been the recipient of capacity building. You mentioned ECBI and I'm sure there have been others. From your perspective, what kinds of things do you find as the sort of the recipient of information, knowledge, capacity building, training, whatever efforts are made. What do you find most useful? What is, from your perspective, things that you find that are better than others if you like? Denise, please. Okay Selim, thank you so much. So like what I said from the onset, it's like capacity building indeed is the background for every developing nation. Like when I started, I knew nothing about climate change, I tried to say. So joining the process of the ECBI, it has opened my mind and opened my own interest in getting to know what it is and what action can be done. So it is against this backdrop that I show key interest in seeing how best networking can be a key factor and in exploring what it is that I want to see as an action. So with this, we were able to show interest and serve as buzzer holder for the ECBI and I can say IED as well, because it just did not give me a platform where in I can just visit state in country, but it also created a platform that I was able to participate in the international conferences. So that was able to join. So the born, I was also able to join in Poland as well as the recent one in Madrid. So the networking aspect has been key. Because what we do is that when your capacity is good, it's not anything for you to stay, to stay on it, but sharing your other platform and see how best you can have more people involved in the process is that's key. So that when you shall have left the few maybe probably by death or something that something someone that can continue to build on what you what you've seen. So the issue of training which is key as well as public awareness and education with the issue of peer to peer exchanges. When I say peer to peer exchanges is kind of key, because it gives you an opportunity to actually tell your fellow colleague what it is like and what's intervention. And with that, other people can understand the processes that of which you're going through. Paying a joint negotiator, a joint negotiator for my country is like a dream that I saw and I wish to, I really wanted to be there. At this juncture, as I speak to you, I'm not just writing price releases, I'm not just writing brochures or doing brochures and everything, but I'm also involved with the country's own plan when it comes to for climate action. For example, I'm also with the, like I said with the national determined contributions, but I'm totally involved in it giving my input and there's a lot that I'm learning within the process. And as also, there was this program, the climate for action empowerment, which is key. And the climate for action empowerment, take a key look on empowering people to see how best they can actually respond to this climate action. So my involvement with my national delegation at Cobb and now being practical on the ground is a key lesson that I can say that I've learned because it also helps to strengthen national capacity as well as looking at the facilitation of technologies development and the dissemination of these deployment as well. So communication, it also links to the same thing that has to do with capacity building. Thank you. Thank you. I can see we have a budding climate champion at the national as well as the global negotiations in you, Denise, and I look forward to tracking your career as you grow in that. I will now finally ask come to mizan for the final question in this round, but we also are having questions asked in the Q&A box so I would ask all the panelists to take a look at those questions. Next round, I'll ask you to pick a question and answer it. But let me ask mizan to share a little bit of his reflection based on a huge amount of experience on capacity building on some lesson learning going forward. So what do you think are key elements to put into the design of capacity building programs in the future, particularly on climate change from your experience, some key lessons. One key lesson that I share first is that capacity building is not a discrete one of act. It's a process. It takes time. You cannot have, for example, quantitative indicators immediately in capacity building. So it's mostly of a process. So if you want to do capacity building, you have to arrange in phases, first phase to begin with just about raising awareness and sensitization, then gradually you design your program based on the level of uptake by the stakeholders. This is one lesson. And then our conception of capacity building, earlier capacity building was taken mostly in the form of training, for example, workshops on training. Actually, capacity building is not just workshop and training. Capacity building, as I mentioned, we do peer to peer learning, for example. And then we also do capacity building. One lesson that students, for example, we give students the semester or thesis class. They go to the field and based on experience, they stay with the community and they do write their thesis or semester assignments. And that way, both the students, as well as the community, learn from each other. So this is another kind of regular constant job. So to me, capacity building has to be a continuous process. And the projects, we cannot depend on the project process. We need to have a programmatic approach for capacity building at least seven, eight years long. And for that, we need whatever little amount, but sustainable kind of support. LDC universities, another experience, LDC universities don't have much funding for research, for example. That is why we need research support from the donors, from the development partners, which was not a culture before. Because development partners used to work mostly with the governments. But now I think development partners are buying in our idea that universities, which have at least some kind of expertise, multi and interdisciplinary for climate change, these kind of expertise is required. So development partners are coming up to slowly accept the idea that the university level institution should be funded for real capacity building if we want to get the big back out of the little money spent. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mizan. So we are now going to move to the audience Q&A session. And we already have a number of questions in the Q&A box. I would encourage anybody who has more questions to put them in there. And as Juliet mentioned at the beginning, you can, if a question you find important, you can press the thumbs up symbol and make it go up the ladder. So I see that one of the questions has attracted quite a lot of support. I'm going to put that to Shanaz to start with. The question is from Ben Robinson, who says, Hello. Are there any standardized capacity building methodologies that you all use to ensure programmatic quality? There is always lots of talk about plans, but never enough about quality actions. So very good question, Ben. Thank you. Shanaz, any reflections on that? Yes, yes. So thank you. And I think part of it is that so I'm breathing because it's something we've thought about also quite a bit. There is no cookie cutter methodology. So it's all often demand driven. It's what is needed, what you decide to respond. And maybe that's the methodology, which is a responsive approach. I think what we like to advocate is the peer to peer, where you get people possibly from Latin America, Asia and Africa together to share learnings on similar issues. And often that sort of methodology, the peer to peer, has a more lasting impact than having workshops where a consultant flies in, does the workshop and then leaves. So I think in terms of an overarching methodology, I'd like to advocate for the peer to peer learning. Worth after that, where people stay, where you form almost like community of practices, where people stay engaged and where they can keep conversing about the issues that's facing them and looking for solutions. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, that's excellent. Let me now take another question, which is for Professor Mizan. I'll read the question Mizan and then I'll ask you to answer it. It's from Mary Dupar from CDKN and ODI. The question for Dr Mizan Khan is how do you balance demand, quote unquote demand for specific types of capability or capacity building and knowledge exchange with supply again quote unquote supply gaps. That you perceive, especially with the peer to peer exchange among government officials. As you mentioned, for example, what if they don't have any interest whatsoever in learning about gender, youth and disability issues in climate adaptation, but you think that it is an important issue to bring up and increase their knowledge and skill. How do you navigate that interesting question. Mizan, let's share some thoughts on on that. Yes. Yes. Thank you. You know, as a half economist kind of my original background was economics. Now I call myself half economist demand and supply are very important issues. Okay, so it's the demand that drives supply. So how to generate demands, for example, in peer to peer learning or we always interact with government officials. Nowadays, compared to earlier years, for example, we find young generation is much more interested in learning. Even if they have permanent positions, but this young generation with at least a master's or PhD from some good universities, most of the government officials nowadays have at least a master's program from good universities. So they have already the appetite for learning and we encourage them and they also get the benefit because in government offices, if someone not just as a bureaucrat can serve as an expert that gives them an added edge over other peers. So government officials now understand the beauty and enjoy the beauty of these having expertise and the supply side. Once we get to know the demand, then we manage the supply in Bangladesh. Bangladesh we can tell we have compared to many not just compared to the eldest is but compared to many eldest is we have good, good expertise in climate change management starting from negotiations or skills down to particularly adaptation skills, because Bangladesh is kind of a country with age old experiential learning. So many other people and other countries are learning from our adaptation model. So we have not much problem in the supply of kind of knowledge and expertise. And as I mentioned, government officials now understand that if they can develop expertise in certain area, they can have beta even professional positions. They can go on secondment on live and go to serve the international bureaucracy for two, three years and they come and many Bangladeshi government officials nowadays are evading that opportunity. So there is kind of an inherent demand which was incipient before which was dormant before but now it's coming up. So I find no problem. Thank you. Thank you very much. So the eternal supply and demand problem we have to find a way to balance it. Well, let me take the next question, which is also from Mary Dupar from CDN and ODI and I'll ask Susan to respond to this one. It's a question for all speakers but I'll give it to Susan first. She says at ODI, we are quite concerned that the language around capacity building in international policies and frameworks still has some colonial baggage quote on quote around it. See our decolonizing development series. She's given a link to the ODI paper here. Of course, Dr Huck, you have been at the forefront of reframing and subverting this notion of capacity building completely and as has mentioned it, but it seems we cannot reject the phrase of capacity building completely. The language is hardwired in the Paris agreement, thoughts about terminology and what we do with it. Susan, any thoughts on this? You are aware of this issue and you are also a practitioner yourself. So how do you navigate between these use of terminologies with a sort of colonial baggage to them and how do we then move on with that in a practical way? Susan. Thank you. It's a very, very important question. Now, I have found that in the climate change space, the terminology now when you are with communities, terminology doesn't actually work. You are really speaking about the same thing, you are communicating differently. So I prefer at a personal level to have my contribution more at the grassroots where we really want to see action where we really want to see utilisation of the capacity and also the ability to attract the resources to get the capacity where it is needed. Like Shina says, it should be demand driven where a community or a community of practice needs a certain set of capacity to strengthen, then it should be supported with funding and the technical expertise. So, as a person, I don't dwell so much into the semantics, but I like that. So, Liam, you have always done the bridge for us. The capacity strengthening would be a more appropriate terminology for me because it is always evolving. I can't say that at Clark when we started we were speaking about capacity or understanding, just understanding adaptation to climate change. Today we really need more capacity in attracting financing. So, as it evolves, it is capacity building, it is capacity strengthening. So I will leave that to the scientists to give more analysis into. Great. Thank you, Susan. Wonderful practical experience. I think that should be the higher level rather than the semantics of what words we choose or don't choose. Let me turn to Denise now. There's a question, which is for all participants, but I want to ask you, especially in the situation that you're in in Liberia, about the impact that COVID is having, the COVID-19 pandemic. Those of us in Asia, we are hearing that in Africa, it's not as bad as one had anticipated. And one of the reasons being put forward is your experience already with the Ebola outbreak and pandemics more generally, and also a younger population. So, would you like to just very quickly reflect on what is happening? Tell us a little bit about what's happening in Liberia. And then your reflections on are there some lessons here in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis that are also applicable to the climate change crisis. Denise. Thank you, Selim. This question indeed now take me back to a little bit kind of emotional trend. When I said this because the index case of Ebola, sorry, coronavirus in my country came as close as my boss, who was the index case when it first hit the country. So we know the trauma it brought to us as a country and it was actually devastating with the news and the panic, people panic and everything. But with the help of the Health Ministry and the citizens, I can safely say, we were able to try to follow the measures in country. So the health protocols that were delivered, we tried to follow it. But now let's look at the global epidemic, some of those things that I see that it hinders. We should have had SB, both SB 52 and COP26, but unfortunately because of this pandemic, it has been postponed. So decisions in this area have been like on a low space. So we also know that this epidemic which now brought the issue of virtual training and meetings, instead of us meeting face to face to come to real actions that we will be able to put on the ground. So the pandemic also includes the issue of having a priorities by national governments towards the climate change ambition was shifted from the actual thing to health emergency response. So with all of these global momentum for climate ambition and the actions was kind of draining strictly as a result of this COVID-19. So as a country, we still did not let the issue of COVID to stop us from trying to do what we need to do, what actions we needed to be done. So that's why we've in the process of COVID, we took the up or the percussion every measure, but then we were able to initiate the process of reviewing our nationally determined contributions and which is key that we can safely say. But our time, our target is to buy 2021 made latest that we can be able to submit our national determined contributions to the UNF triple C and miss the COVID situation. The cases in Liberia right now is not on the increase as it was, but we can also tell you that we were still following the precautionary measures and trying to ensure that climate actions, which is key to be taken into actions. Thank you Denise for that wonderful experience. I know that situation in Africa generally in Liberia is extremely important for us. Let me now shift the conversation a little bit towards looking forward to COP 26 in particular in the UNFCC process and I'll ask Mizan to start this and if we have time, hopefully we can hear from others as well. In terms of the capacity building issue. How do you see this featuring in COP 26 and in particular beyond COP 26 in the stock take that is going to take place. I think this is something that perhaps we can collectively put our minds towards thinking about a stock take on article 11, which is the article dealing with article 11 of the Paris agreement, which is the article dealing with capacity building, whether or not we can collectively do some good lesson learning and recommendations to the UNFCC process, if not by COP 26 but definitely by the stock take. Mizan any thoughts on this how we might take it forward. Yes. Together with you, I have been working on capacity building at the last few cops starting from 2017. We have been organizing capacity building day. And now we work very closely with PCCB, which is a body under the UNFCCC, and we organize many different events week long events. So, and also under PCCB there is a network we are part of this network and we extend we need to extend this network. That is again the Santiago network. So, we need to extend this capacity building networks because, as I always tell that more than two thirds, 75% of the indices have put the building as a condition to implementation of their indices. So this shows that earlier capacity building model through the technical assistance program didn't work well. So there is a paradigm. There is the need for paradigm shift and article 11, together with article 12 and 13 gives us that potential to shift that paradigm. And we need to upscale this. And how can we do that. As I mentioned that earlier capacity building targeted to government officials did not work much because government officials are transferable. So we need to have sustainable capacity breeder, what I call, and universities can serve as the capacity breeder. Governments come and go but universities will stay. So we need to strengthen universities and I think that we can organize side events to raise this issue. Our voice louder that government role will be there. Government will serve as the administrative haven coordinator of all these activities, but universities should be put at the center. So this is our message and we need to continue our message at COP26 and also beyond. So this is mine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Ann. We are coming towards the end of our session. I know that there are quite a few other questions in the Q&A box. I'm afraid we may not be able to answer all of them, but we will keep them on record and and if you give us your contacts will try and send you answers individually. If we can, but let me make the same proposition to Shanaz, given that you know you do a lot of work in city care and a lot of partnerships and network building. Can we collectively do some significant level of assessment, self assessment amongst us our partners and networks on what has worked well, what has worked not so well, what kinds of things do we feel need to be done more and invested in more and take that as sort of personal or organizational stock taking. To COP26 and then, as I said, in the even bigger evaluation stock take that's going to take place in a couple of years time, where we can actually start doing these substantial learning exercises. And we can do this very easily with the Paris Committee on capacity building, which is the institutional structure under article 11, with whom we have a very good relationship and I'm sure they would be very open to us offering to do this. Shanaz, any thoughts on that? So Salim, I think completely it is something that that I feel should be done. It serves as a baseline from where we then move forward. My only concern around this is the coordinating such a huge activity, and it will need funding to do it because I think there's no organization that readily has funding to do this sort of stock take and base. But I think there's value in doing it, taking it to COP and then using it as the baseline and following the trajectory of the capability building activities like from the south, how's the north and south engaging. So I think there is a lot of value in it, Salim. And I'd like us to encourage, yeah, to encourage that it gets done. Great. Thank you very much, Shanaz. And so on that note, I will thank all of our panelists for your sharing your time and your experience and your thoughts. I think that was a very useful session. Apologies to participants who gave questions that we weren't able to address. But as I said, we hope to be able to maybe send you answers to your questions later. In terms of next steps from my side, before I hand over to Andy to share some final thoughts, I suggest maybe Shanaz, we do a little bit of thinking about a proposal maybe on on on how to do this substantially. Let us, you know, I ID card together and all our panelists will invite them to be part of the exercise. And in my view, the structure should be a self assessment learning of people who've done this and and give their own experiences rather than an external evaluation of something that has been done because the paradigm of evaluation is a very donor driven evaluation of you know what you did with money. Whereas what I meant more interested in is what did you learn what did people learn and and how do we then capture that learning in a substantive manner that can make a difference going forward. So thank you all the panelists for an extremely interesting discussion I'm sure all the participants found it interesting as well. So with that, let me invite Andy to share some further reflections on what we heard and also maybe a little bit about what we might do going forward. Andy. Thank you ever so much Salim and many thanks to all of the participants. It was a really rich discussion. I think what emerged from me just quickly without sort of going over the ground you covered so ably is a sort of distinction between businesses usual understanding of capacity building where it's kind of driven by external top down donor kind of project timetables and project designs with kind of really rigid deliverables. And without by short term sort of time frames and without a real view to building capability for the future, not just capability to implement the capability to lead and determine agendas and Salim. The work you've done down the years with Ikeb but also with IID is really exemplary in that sense we've heard about the universities consortium the luck, but also the clap fellowship programme vividly from Susan that was so great really in developing a generation of leaders so on the other side you've then got this kind of business unusual concept of strengthening or building capability and capacity which is about networks, horizontal and mutual learning complex nonlinear processes. It's also personal and human, as we got the stories today. Patient and long term and requires patient resourcing and patient funding. I think that's really critical to it to build if you like leadership in new sites, particularly grassroots sites and building communities of practice. I think that was a term that Chanel's used, and it's also iterative and involves learning from the grassroots and learning from experience so maybe the big challenge Salim is how to get a shift in that understanding in for a light the UNFCCC where the language is embedded, but many people come at it with a business as usual perspective so how to get that shift. I don't have. I mean, I'm very happy that we join the initiative that Shanaaz and you just proposed, and in terms of taking this work forward. I think it's a question of continuing to learn from what has worked in the past. I think we all know when this tastes and smells and feels like something that genuinely goes capacity so it's how we can draw the lessons from that and take them into, you know, the for aware it matters which includes donor culture and practice, but also includes the UNFCCC where the language is embedded. So it was a really, really rich discussion, and huge thanks to you, Salim, for steering it so well, and huge thanks to our panelists as well to Prof Mizan, to Danise, to Shanaaz and to Susan was just great. Many thanks. Thank you very much Andy for those words and and also for your willingness to take this forward. Let's let's do some constructive brainstorming on that. So before we close, let me just share a few thoughts. I'm not going to try and summarize the discussion but try and think about how we might take things forward. And in the chat box I've put in a website called Goveshana. Goveshana is a Bangla word for research, and it's a platform of a number of universities and research institutions based in Bangladesh, where we hold an annual conference every January. Normally over the last six years we've had it in person several hundred people at my university in Dhaka, but from next year onwards from 2021, from the 21st to the 24th of January, we are going to make it a virtual event and we are going to make it a global event with a very big focus on locally led adaptation to climate change. And we, over the years in ICAD we have done lots of short courses and trainings we run a master's degree in climate change and development and we have several hundred alumni from all over the world, who have participated in some of our capacity building activities and we stay in close touch with our alumni. So for us the training and learning is just one step in a long term relationship. And so we are going to be using our alumni all over the world to help us run sessions on a 24 hour over four days basis with sessions aimed at different geographies including eastern Africa, western Africa. We may do them in French for West Africa. We'll do them in Latin America and Spanish etc. And so I would like to invite anybody who's listening and participating here who would be interested to look up our website. Please do join us in the Goveshana conference in January next year and not just the one-off conference in January next year which is 2021, it's the first year of the new decade. We hope to use this as a launching pad for the next decade of next next 10 years of developing our capacity at speed and at scale to deal with the impacts of climate change and we'll make this an annual event every January. We'll come together, we'll take stock, we'll see what's working, what's not working and how can we speed up and expand on the work that everybody is doing. And it's very much based on individuals taking an interest and doing things. So one of the questions was on what happens when you train people who aren't interested. If somebody is not interested, there's not a lot you can do about it. But if an individual is interested, then there is a lot you can do to help expand on that interest, invest in that interest and enable people with that interest to take things forward. And that really is the essence of the capacity building paradigm that we try to do in my center in ICAD with our partners and our friends. It is, I call it building social capital or another way of making friends and working with friends. And that's really what I've been doing my entire career and I enjoy doing that. So I'm going to close by inviting everybody who's on this call and particularly the panelists who are with us to join forces with us in planning the Gobeshwna conference and in taking us beyond January 2021 to take us to 2030 on a 10 year journey of building capacities at scale across the world, but particularly in the most vulnerable developing countries, which is where we have the greatest interest from our side. So, thank you and goodbye.