Climate and Agriculture Negotiations: Towards more coherence between climate, agro-processing, trade and agriculture

This training programme was developed to help government officials from Rwanda better understand agriculture-related issues in both climate and trade negotiations. It provides detailed analysis of concepts, stakeholder engagement, current status, contestations and preferred future positions of the East African Community (EAC). Delivery of the course facilitates active multi-stakeholder engagement, including representatives from Environment, Agriculture and Trade Ministries as well as interaction with farmers and agro-processors.

Training Objectives:

To increase the capacities of a critical mass of representatives of stakeholders (e.g., staff of relevant government ministries, private sector, farmers, CSOs, staff of regional organisations) in engaging the general discourse on agriculture and climate negotiations through the mastering of critical terms and procedures involved.

• To develop analytical, as well as interpersonal skills required to build negotiation consensus on agriculture and climate change from the national, through the regional (EAC), Africa Union to the global level.
• To increase the capacity of stakeholders to take advantage of ongoing agriculture, climate and trade negotiation processes, drawing from the WTO, UNFCCC, existing Intended Nationally Determined contributions [NDCs] and other global texts from both the historical and futuristic perspectives, including the upcoming COP23 in Bon, Germany and ongoing WTO negotiations.
• To highlight and emphasise the fact that in negotiations, contesting policy domains/groupings get what they negotiate for, and that both the national and EAC interest remain the building blocks for the preferred agricultural position in climate negotiations that are informed by the twin pillars of adaptation and mitigation.
• To continue building an understanding on the concept of policy entrepreneurship that embraces the art and science of negotiation – knowing when to push for a position, when to stop and when to push again and when to withdraw if need be etc.

Module 1: Issues analysis and concepts
This module introduces participants to concepts and definitions of agriculture (including agro-industrial development) climate change, food security and trade. The goal is to enhance understanding of participants on how agriculture (including agro-industrial development) can be more climate-aware, trade-driven and food security-enhancing in the EAC region.

Module 2: Features of Selected International Institutions
The module allows stakeholders attending the workshop to familiarize themselves with international institutions and their key areas of work related mainly to agriculture (including agro-industry) and climate negotiations. Specifically, the module has the objective to increase the knowledge and understanding of some key relevant international institutions and/or bodies responsible of policymaking and/or policy implementation mechanisms in the area of agriculture (including agro-industrial development) and climate negotiations.

Module 3: Agriculture and climate change: Focus on the UNFCCC and WTO negotiations
This module grows the participants’ confidence into addressing agriculture (including agro-industrial development) in climate negotiations, and vice versa. The purpose is to continue developing negotiation capacity in EAC teams that will result in favourable decisions on agriculture from the UNFCCC and other global negotiation platforms like the WTO.

Module 4: Simulation exercise: Drawing up future negotiation positions
The emphasis of this module is to encourage holistic, substantive, collective and pragmatic thinking by the participants that enables them to sharpen skills to interact with institutions at the national, regional and global level platforms dealing with agriculture, agro-processing and climate change matters and negotiations.