WASCAL, in partnership with its Southern African counterparts, SASSCAL and German partners Center for Development Research(ZEF), held a side event dubbed “World Café, Climate research made in West and Southern Africa” inside the Climate Planet at the just ended COP 23 held in Bonn, Germany under the auspices of the Government of Fiji.
The event was attended by dignitaries from the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF), funders of
both WASCAL and SASSCAL, the Honourable Minister of Environment, Science
and Technology of Ghana as well as the executive management of the
three outfits.
WASCAL was amongst the hundreds of organizations
across the world that participated in this year’s COP 23. The World Café
was to create a platform to tell the success stories of WASCAL and
SASSCAL, engage global stakeholders attending the Conference of Parties
(COP 23) organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). Some of the topics discussed included: How to build
human and academic capacities in Africa; How to share and disseminate
knowledge in Africa Research in Africa and Climate services in Africa:
How to produce and deliver them.
The annual conference is the
largest gathering of climate change stakeholders across the world. The
United Nations Climate Change Conferences are yearly conferences held in
the framework of the UNFCCC. They serve as the formal meeting of the
UNFCCC Parties (Conference of the Parties, COP) to assess progress in
dealing with climate change, and beginning in the mid-1990s, to
negotiate the Kyoto Protocol to establish legally binding obligations
for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.