28 November 2008: The UN Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from the UN Foundation and the Governments of Norway, Finland and Switzerland, is providing assistance to 20 developing countries to strengthen national capacity to address climate change policy options under the UNFCCC, including investment assessment and financial flows for key sectors. As a major output of this initiative, UNDP has released Bali Action Plan Briefing documents, which are designed to provide policy makers with background information on the four Bali Action Plan building blocks – mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance – and land use, land-use change and forestry.

The briefing documents include: The Bali Action Plan: Key Issues in the
Climate Negotiations – Summary for Policy Makers; National Policies and
their Linkages to Negotiations over a Future International Climate
Change Agreement; Climate Change Mitigation Negotiations, with an
Emphasis on Options for Developing Countries; Negotiations on
Additional Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change in
Developing Countries; Adaptation to Climate Change: the New Challenge
for Development in the Developing World; Mitigation Technology
Challenges: Considerations for National Policy Makers to Address
Climate Change; and Key Issues in Land Use, Land-Use Change and
Forestry, with an Emphasis on Developing Country Perspectives.
In
addition, National Inter-Ministerial Dialogues – bringing line
ministries to discuss the Bali Action Plan negotiations and its impact
on national policies – are being organized. Workshops in Namibia,
Bangladesh and Niger have already taken place, while others are
scheduled in the first quarter of 2009 in Nepal, Turkmenistan, Gambia,
Algeria, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Ecuador. [UNDP Press Release and link to the Briefing Documents]