Project-Based Climate Change Learning
Many USAID climate change projects provide learning opportunities for host country counterparts and other development practitioners. Between October 2013 and October 2014, USAID supported more than 70,000 person hours of training through mission Global Climate Change programming in Adaptation, Clean Energy and Sustainable Landscapes. (Person hours is calculated by multiplying instruction hours of training by the number of people completing each training.)
Total Running Time
USAID's Lowering Emissions in Asia's Forests (USAID LEAF) has as a program objective to strengthen human and institutional capacity to implement climate change mitigation efforts in the forestry-land use sector. Beginning in 2012, USAID LEAF and the U.S. Forest Service convened a group of 12 leading professors from eight universities in Southeast Asia to identify climate change topics that would benefit from improved university-level teaching materials. Over the next two years, with support from university professors from the United States, the network of educators grew and collaboratively developed a series of four modules: Basic Climate Change, Social and Environmental Soundness, Low Emission Land Use Planning and Carbon Measurement and Monitoring. Each module is comprised of presentations, associated lecturer notes, complementary case studies, role plays and extensive online resources. Today, the network has grown to 700 professors from 63 universities across the region, who are adapting and teaching the new Climate Change Curriculum to more than 30,000 students.
The Enhancing Capacity for Low Emission Development Strategies (EC-LEDS) program has developed a Leadership Course on Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS) for Policymakers in the Asia Region. This “train-the-trainer" approach is intended to build capacity among climate change champions to design and deliver trainings on LEDS to other national and subnational government policy makers, with the goal of disseminating knowledge on the LEDS process, terminology and benefits. The Leadership Course was originally delivered to an Asia regional audience as a three-day training in 2014 through a partnership between EC-LEDS and Low Emissions Asian Development (LEAD) programs. As a result of this training, a core group of LEDS champions from Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam have the knowledge, skills and materials to facilitate introductory LEDS trainings and communications to key decision makers in their countries.
USAID has also supported learning initiatives like the International Research Institute for Climate and Society’s Climate Concepts for Development Webinar Series. In each webinar, scientists describe the concepts behind their work and demonstrate how climate services can inform development decision making for improved outcomes. The webinars also offer tips on how to deploy these concepts in climate-resilient decision making and planning.