Master Class on climate change for African youth

Preparing the young generation to meet the challenges of climate change

A South-South cooperation program has been initiated as part of the Climate Change Competence Center (4C) Morocco", which aims to strengthen the capacities of African countries to understand and address the key topics of climate change.

The Master Class target young African experts, and to foster their knowledge and leadership, enabling them to support the green agenda and to develop climate policies in the coming years.

10000 applications in two years

The Master Classes are organized into two levels: A First Master Class and an Advanced Master Class. The classes are organized around four training modules covering different aspects of climate change as shown below.

More than 6000 young Africans responded to the call for applications launched by the 4C project for the First Masterclass of 2021 and 4000 applied for the First Masterclass of 2022.

200 candidates were selected in 2021 for the First Master Class, 149 candidates continued the training with the Advanced Master Class. 284 young experts started with the First Master Class in 2022. In total, more than 36 training sessions have been organized under the First and the Advanced Master Class in 2021 and 2022. Participants come from Morocco and about thirty further African countries, with a representation of ~50% women.

The Master Classes in three Moroccan universities to acquire a Master on climate change are one component of the comprehensive set of activities of the Climate Change Competence Center (4C) in Morocco.

The Master Classes are delivered online through distance learning, allowing reaching a large number of Moroccan and African students, aiming to create a large network of exchange among students from the South. This also allows to build up a peer-to-peer learning and mentoring from the growing pool of experts, aiming to mitigate the lack of qualified climate change experts African countries often face when it comes to concrete implementation of their national climate change targets (Nationally Determined Contributions - NDCs).

The activities of the 4C project are made possible by the funding of the German Government through funding of the International Climate Initiative (IKI), and contributes to two funding areas of IKI to support both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The Modules of the Master Class

Module 1: Introduction to climate change

The Master Class begins with an introduction on climate change to enable young experts to better understand the causes and implications, as well as the key terms, from scientific concepts to the international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC and its agreements.

The module provides participants with the foundation of climate change as well as the current status of international climate policy.

Module 2: Vulnerability & adaptation analysis

Once the basic concepts of the climate system were introduced, global circulation models and climate models, including their relevance, their design and implementation, as well as their modes of operation. The second part of this module focuses on climate scenarios based on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios by the Scientific Body on Climate Change to the United Nations, and their GHG  concentration trajectories ‘Representative concentration Pathways‘, as well as Shared Socio-economic Pathways that are based on different climate policies.

How to make spatial information more granular and hence to increase the accuracy of climate models and potential climate change impacts was discussed in another session. The session focused on downscaling techniques for climate models from global and regional levels to national and sub-national levels, as well as on the downscaling of the temporal distribution of climate variables at the regional scale.

To enable participants to respond to the impacts of climate change the module also analysed approaches to assess vulnerabilities and climate risks, as well as the development of climate change adaptation plans. To provide the participants with tools to ensure the follow through to such plans the final aspect of this module looked into monitoring and evaluation systems.

Module 3: GHG Inventory and Mitigation

Reducing emissions requires information and knowledge of the approaches of GHG Inventories and the development of mitigation actions. The Master Class focused on four axes based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC):

• Methods for calculating GHG inventories
• Tools for Mitigation Analysis
• Mitigation Assessments: Concepts and mitigation options by sector
• Mitigation actions and co-benefits for sustainable development.

Module 4: Climate Finance

The last module focuses on channels of climate finance and equips participants with hands-on sessions to build their capacity to develop concepts and initiatives for submission to major financers such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF).