As ever, climate change knowledge and practice is evolving rapidly, whether related to climate change science, the landscape of climate negotiations and politics, the deployment of renewable energy, or the way climate change adaptation is framed and promoted. (Of course, despite all this frenetic activity, atmospheric greenhouse gases continue to rise steadily, making adaptation ever more urgent).

To reflect this changing landscape of knowledge and practice, and the growing urgency of adaptation, we have overhauled our core training activities, replacing our previous courses on Adaptation Mainstreaming and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) for Adaptation with a single course on Adapting to Climate Change. This new course combines a lot of the content of the earlier courses, revising and updating it, but also includes some new content to reflect recent developments in adaptation, international negotiations and climate change science.

As always, the course is informed by Garama’s recent experiences working on climate change and development issues, for example on adaptation learning in Kenya; local adaptation, mainstreaming and resilience measurement in Nepal; evaluation of urban climate change initiatives; and review of how countries track their adaptation progress and how this relates to global reporting. The course will be highly interactive, and will consist of a mix of taught sessions and exercises, in which participants apply what they have learned. As before, the training is intended to be highly practical, proving participants with the knowledge and skills they need to address climate change adaptation in their work. The course is focused on addressing adaptation in international development contexts, with an emphasis on developing countries, but is relevant to any individuals or organisations that need to identify, design and implement adaptation measures.

The course costs £1200 for five days, excluding accommodation but including lunches, tea/coffee, and dinner on one evening.

Anyone who wants an overview of climate change issues can attend the first day of the training, which covers global climate science and policy contexts (e.g. the Paris Agreement and its goals), global and regional impacts of climate change, and key concepts and issues related to climate change adaptation. The cost of attending the first day is £240, with discounts available for local government employees and private individuals.

Below is a taste of some of the topics covered over the five days of the course:

• Global science and policy contexts – the Paris Agreement, temperature ‘targets’ and our prospects for meeting them, key points from IPCC reports and other high-profile studies;
• Observed and projected changes in climate and past analogues – what can we expect and have we seen anything like it before?
• Global and regional climate change impacts – how will climate change affect different parts of the world, and what are the implications?
• Different types of adaptation: incremental versus transformational adaptation – what are they and should the balance be?
• ‘Deep adaptation’ – a growing area of discussion concerned with how we respond to existential risks from climate change;
• Adaptation, resilience, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and risk – what do these terms mean and how are they related?
• Mainstreaming or integrating climate change into planning and development practice – how to do it well, and the dangers of doing it badly;
• Screening activities for climate change risks and opportunities: the 5 main types of climate change risks associated with development activities;
• Climate risk and vulnerability assessment – are they different, what do they involve, and how do we do them?
• How do we decide what adaptation options to pursue? Tools and methods for identifying, prioritising and selecting adaptation measures;
• How do we know if adaptation is successful? – Monitoring, evaluation and learning for climate change adaptation;
• Measuring resilience: everyone is talking about it but few are doing it – can we do it, should we do it, and if so, how can we do it?

The new course will run for the first time from 18-22 March 2019, and will be held in Norwich, UK, either in the building that houses the Garama office, or at another venue such as the University of East Anglia. As before, the course will be confirmed once we have received sufficient registrations, so if you want to attend, please be sure to register in good time, and tell your friends and colleagues! Click here for instructions on how to do so. Please feel free to contact us if you want any further information on the course.