Training on Climate Change Adaptation, Mitigation and Resilience

Our climate is changing rapidly and communities all over the world are feeling the impact. Climate change impacts affect social and ecological systems in complex and broad-ranging across regions, groups and sectors. Many of these impacts have cascading negative effects on social, economic and health outcomes of communities especially in food and livelihood security. In order to respond to climate change, more vigorous actions are required to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and to adapt to unavoidable consequences that are increasing vulnerability around the world. While Africa has contributed the least to climate change, it’s the hardest hit by its effects. Communities in Africa consequently need to learn to cope with the effects of climate change including warmer temperatures, drier soils, floods, droughts and other changes in weather extremes. At different governance levels and scales, appropriate responses are needed to mitigate and build adaptive community capacity and therefore resilience against effects of climate change.

This training places local sustainability, its development challenges and local vulnerabilities in the context of climate changes at regional and global levels in order to understand their linkages. And develop local strategies that support poverty reduction, build community resiliency while supporting and preserving biodiversity.

Course Objectives

The overarching objective of the course is to provide the participants with knowledge on how climate change can be integrated into natural resources management policy, programmes, projects and other community-based climate change response actions in which the participants are or will be involved in. Upon completing the course, participants will be able to;

• Enhance participant’s knowledge on the fundamentals of climate change science
• Equip course participants with knowledge and skills in climate change adaptation and mitigation
• Train participants on approaches to build community resilience against climate change
• equip participants with a better understanding of climate change and its impacts on food security
• Enhance participant’s awareness on the challenges and opportunities in climate change governance.
• Equip participants with skills to be able to conduct stakeholder, vulnerability & resilience assessments to support decision making processes;
• Strengthen participant’s skills for stakeholder engagement, policy influencing, advocacy and negotiation to help for establishment of more effective governance structures;
• Enable participants to explore institutional arrangements needed for addressing food security and climate change linkages;
• Strengthen the participant’s capacity of planning processes to deliver climate change action
• Enhance participants understanding of the international climate change legal and policy framework and appreciate the key issues under negotiation

Target group

The course targets policy and decision makers and civil servants in national ministries and local authorities, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, private sectors working in agriculture, environment and natural resources management; Researchers and students. Participants need to have relevant education background.

Course Duration

Five days

Course Content and Structure

A. Course content

Introduction to climate change science; human contribution to climate change; observed changes in climate change; projected future trends and impacts of climate. The international legal and policy framework on climate change including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. Climate change adaptation: vulnerability of agriculture to changing climate, assessment of climate vulnerability, global adaptation initiatives and programmes. Climate change and mitigation: mitigation strategies and integrating mitigation into planning and economic sectors. Climate change and resilient pathways: Building climate resilience among smallholder farmers and concepts of climate smart agriculture. Climate change finance: major streams of international climate finance. Planning for climate change: Integrating Climate Change in food and nutritional security programmes and projects; and towards low carbon agricultural development; international programmes and initiatives to support climate change planning.

B. Course structure

The course is structured around six major topics/modules:

1. Introduction to Climate Change Science

2. International Legal and Policy Framework for Climate Change

3. Climate Change Mitigation

4. Climate Change Adaptation

5. Climate Change Finance

6. Planning for Climate Change