DEVCO Training: Environment and climate change in development cooperation (generalist course)

The participants will:

• Be able to explain why environment and climate change are not stand alone sector issues but affect all areas of development co-operation
• Understand the benefits and challenges of integrating environment and climate change in EC/EU development cooperation
• Become acquainted through practical examples with the tools (e.g. political economy analysis, EIA and SEA) and approaches (e.g. policy dialogue, awareness raising) to integrate environment and climate change at the various stages of the operations cycle
• Have the opportunity to work directly on projects and programmes from their own portfolios, bringing tangible and direct results for their work

The course will use an appropriate mix of experience sharing, case studies, group work, role play, presentations and films to foster a lively and engaging process.

Course Content

The structure of the 3 days course is organised in two parts (why and how) and composed of 11 modules as shown below:

Part 1: Essentials - Why integrate environment and climate change in EU/EC Development Cooperation

Module 1: Exploring definitions and concepts
Module 2: Understanding the environment, climate and development linkages and making the case
Module 3: The EU approach – addressing EU and international commitments and integrating throughout the operations cycle
Module 4: Integrating in the programming

Part 2: Integrating in practice - How to integrate environment and climate change in EU/EC Development Cooperation in a country context?

Module 5: Tools and approaches to integration - from economic, environmental and climate assessments to awareness raising tools
Module 6: Integrating environment and climate change in the project
Module 7: Integrating environment and climate change in sector approaches (with a focus on agriculture, energy, private sector development and governance and other sectors on demand)
Module 8: Integrating environment and climate change in budget support programmes
Module 9: Integrating environment and climate change through monitoring and evaluation in the different aid modalities
Module 10: Wrap up and next steps

Participants can attend parts 1 or 2 independently. However, participants who attend part 2 are being asked to have attended part 1 previously.

Interaction and learning is promoted using a combination of presentations, group discussion, group exercises, case studies and development of individual or team action plans.

As prerequisite participants will be asked to become familiar with definitions and concepts related to the environment, climate change, green economy and integration. They will also be invited to share in advance a project or programme of their choice to work on during the course, thereby getting from the course direct and immediate results for their work.

Group exercises and case studies are designed so that the different roles and levels of experience and knowledge of different target groups are taken into account.

The course focuses on EC project and programme management cycle and therefore complements the course on country-led environmental and climate change mainstreaming (specialist course) – a course which focuses more specifically on understanding governments’ own integration efforts, and how to support them. It is also complemented by a one-day introductory course on green economy which focuses on the economic opportunities related to the environment sector.

The course can be organised and customised on demand at the request of EU Delegations or Units in HQ. It can be adapted to focus on issues or sectors of interest to the EU Delegation or Unit.