Ghana

Members of parliament can help break the international stalemate on climate change action by ‘domesticating’ global decisions, using national legislation. But to do that they often need long-term capacity-building programmes to catalyse the process: programmes that have support within the Government and across parliaments.

In 2010 IIED worked on a programme to build parliamentary capacity to adapt to and mitigate climate change in southern African countries. We commissioned ‘in country’ researchers to work with parliamentarians and their staff as they described and assessed the parliamentary institutions, their roles and relationships within government, and their effectiveness at addressing climate change issues. The programme included a study of Scotland to offer a comparison with a more developed nation.

Countries need new tools to check whether climate change adaptation is keeping development on-track, and whether costs and benefits are fairly distributed. IIED and partners are developing a framework that does this by assessing risk management and resilience at many levels.

Every month we highlight a new, groundbreaking or bestselling IIED research outcome. This month we feature the innovative project: