6 June 2012: The Government of Benin held a workshop on “Pre-validation of Benin’s National Strategy to Strengthen Human Resources, Learning and Skills Development to Address Climate Change,” which discussed concrete actions to strengthen the country’s climate change learning capacity.

The workshop was held on 6 June 2012, in Cotonou, Benin, within the framework of the national UN CC:Learn Project “Strengthening Human Resources and Skills to Address Climate Change.” It focused, among other things, on the development of a national strategy to strengthen human resources and skills and the identification of priority actions for inclusion in this strategy.

Participants gathered in working groups to consider these issues and identified priority actions, such as: developing a teacher’s guide on climate change for primary education; training teachers to use the existing guide on climate change for secondary education; establishing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. center on climate change; and strengthening capacity to conduct climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessments in the area of water management.

Closing the workshop, Ibila Djibril, Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urbanism, and National Coordinator of the UN CC:Learn Project, outlined next steps in the development of the national strategy, namely: integrating the comments received during the workshop into the draft strategy; finalizing the structure of the strategy; and completing the prioritization of the actions to be included in the strategy.

The One UN Training Service Platform on Climate Change (UN CC:Learn) is a collaborative initiative involving 32 UN agencies that supports member States, UN agencies and other development partners in designing and implementing country-driven, results-oriented and sustainable learning to address climate change. The UN CC:Learn Secretariat is serviced by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). [UNITAR Press Release]