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“In the past, a lot of money for capacity building has been spent on foreign consultants who fly in for a week and stay at five-star, air-conditioned hotels.” The audience, a group of environmental professionals, academics, and embassy staffers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, cheered heartily at this critique of the amenities provided for past consultants. Offering a speech to open a capacity-building summit in preparation for COP29, the speaker, an environmental activist and researcher, continued. “But now, for us, the big question is changing the system, system building, and strengthening local capacity.” Throughout the session, the figure of the foreign consultant in the air-conditioned hotel was invoked as the past of climate governance, a past that was now being left behind with the turn to localized system building.…