Facilitating learning and capacity building through international organizations: the emerging role of the UNFCCC as learning forum

The policymaking context to address climate change is characterised by multilevel reinforcing governance dynamics between the local, national, regional (e.g., EU) and international level. While our understanding of the role, relevance and impact of learning has improved on the European and national level, we lack a clearer understanding of the central co-ordinating role of the international level of environmental governance through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. This contribution explores how the process of learning affects and is affected by the dynamic interactions with and within the policymaking context of the UNFCCC negotiations and the multilevel reinforcing dynamics with the sub-national, national and EU levels. As the formal negotiations on the Paris Agreement on climate change and its implementation are in the final concluding stages, the focus of the international community moves towards increasing countries’ ambitions in addressing climate change through national-level policies. This transforms the role of the UNFCCC into a learning forum. Based on interviews and participant observation between 2015 and 2021, this paper process-traces how the UNFCCC is emerging as a learning forum and assuming a co-ordinating role on the international level while closely interacting with the local, national and regional levels of governance. This paper dissects the central role of learning on the international level as driving factor for policy diffusion in multilevel governance beyond the EU.