News: SEI's Adaptation School

01/06/09 18:24
There are only a handful of climate change adaptation training programs I’ve ever run across. Columbia University’s Earth Institute occasionally offers workshops and seminars (and the link to their education and outreach section is on the new Education section of this site). WWF has run many of these, sometimes focused on particular biomes or occasionally set up as more general “climate camps” (I have t-shirts). I gather that EcoAdapt.org also runs adaptation workshops. No doubt many other groups do too. This morning I got a notice about a two-week session in South Africa, sponsored in part by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), which has some very good staff members working on adaptation issues and is the sponsor for the weADAPT wiki. Their course announcement is below.

The Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town and the Stockholm Environment Institute, partners in weADAPT and the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership, are offering a 2-week “winter school” in the use of climate information for developing adaptation strategies, plans and policies. The winter school will take place from 13 to 26 July 2009, and is designed to provide a balance between seminar style teaching and hands-on training, supported by leading climate scientists and adaptation experts, using the weADAPT platform for developing the curriculum. We aim to provide an overview of the latest relevant climate science as well as working through sector specific case studies and experiences of the application of this knowledge in acting to reduce risks. The winter school is supported financially by UNITAR and SENSA.

Objective
One of the largest limiting factors behind appropriate regional response to climate change is the misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about core climate science concepts, access to climate information, and the use of climate change data. While globally there is a significant amount of published material and online forums, these are often not appropriate to a given activity, lack the important element of engagement with experts in the field, fail to make the link between the biophysical and the social, and sometimes do not provide effective access to core knowledge. This training course aims to fill some of those gaps, providing participants with the knowledge and skills to use regionally appropriate climate information in their work on adaptation.

Content
Training will cover the following core topics:

  1. Concepts of natural and anthropogenic climate change, vulnerability and adaptation
  2. Analyzing data for climatic change and variability (changes in time and space; periodicity; trends and shifts in climate)
  3. Regional climate change scenarios (methods of generating scenarios; strengths and weaknesses; limitations of current products; future developments)
  4. Uncertainty, probability and climate envelopes
  5. Extreme events and threshold analysis

The course will use case studies that illustrate vulnerability, impacts, risk assessments and adaptation measures in key sectors (including water, agriculture, the urban environment); and the interpretation of climate information will be covered in framing discussions on social networks, risk perception, adaptation choices, adaptation knowledge platforms and climate risk screening tools.

Topics will be adapted to accommodate participant learning goals.

Further information
The winter school will take place 13 - 26 July 2009. There is no fee for the course, but participants will need to cover their own travel and living expenses.

Expressions of interest from potential participants are being solicited and should be sent to winterschool@csag.uct.ac.za

To apply, please provide your current affiliation and position, and a 1-page letter outlining your experience in the field of climate change and adaptation. Include a brief statement of your goals in taking the course and, where possible, a short description of one specific climate change case study related to adaptation which you have worked on.

Note: In order to provide hands-on learning, space will be limited to 20 participants.

Further information will be emailed in due course to applicants, as well as being made available on the course website at: http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/winterschool2009.

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