Nairobi — On the 21-22 June 2018, over 85 participants drawn from civil society organizations, community based organizations and youth groups engaged in a highly interactive training on climate information services (CIS) at the Ngong Hills hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The training was organized through a collaboration of the Pan-Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) and the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), under the auspices of the Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER).
Participants were taken through a climate information learning module developed by ACPC in collaboration with UNCC:Learn. In addition, presentations were made by the University of Nairobi on research relating to engaging stakeholders at grassroots level, for enhanced uptake and use of CIS, and by the Kenya Meteorological Department on services offered to climate sensitive sectors by the NMHS. Deliberations and reflections centered on the availability, access, uptake and use of climate information at national and subnational levels, types of climate information, dissemination techniques, opportunities and challenges encountered by stakeholders in accessing and using CIS.
Participants learnt that there are still bottlenecks in the provision of precise downscaled location-specific, reliable, timely, and user-friendly weather and climate information that are required to provide fit-for-purpose climate information services that effectively address vulnerability in communities, as well as capitalizing on emerging opportunities due to climate change. Harnessing new frontiers for economic growth, will require significant utilization of CIS.
The economy, environment and people of Kenya are highly dependent on the natural resources, such as land, water, and forests that are highly vulnerable to climate variability and change. With rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, there has been increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding which threaten the sustainability of the country's development.
Considering the foregoing, participants committed to disseminating the knowledge acquired from the CIS training on their return to their regions, and to collaborate with new contacts established at the event to address the paucity of CIS understanding at community level.
The training event culminated in a field visit to the Kenya Meteorological Department, where participants were conducted to a guided tour of the weather forecasting facilities by climate scientists who explained the processes involved in generation, packaging and dissemination of daily and seasonal weather predictions.
