Asian Climate Change Research Program
Global climate change due to growing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the Earth's atmosphere presents a major challenge to humankind in the 21st century. Actions to mitigate green house gas emissions and policies to facilitate this are needed. In response to the growing importance of this human induced impact, capacity building and enhancement in developing countries has assumed particular importance. AIT in consultation with Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), has initiated the 'Formulation Workshop of the Asian Climate Change Research Programme (ACCReP)', held 27-28 October 2005 at AIT. Over 60 participants from twelve countries of South and South East Asia , and regional and international organisations, in addition to non governmental institutions participated in the workshop.
Prof. S. Kumar of AIT, an organizing committee member, said the workshop's aim was to prepare a proposal to be submitted to Sida for possible funding on Climate Change research, specifically on the mitigation of green house gases (GHGs).
'For this workshop, AIT is the coordinating institution, with institutions from twelve South and South East Asian countries participating in the workshop. The proposed programme broadly focuses on research, capacity enhancement, and networking in the Asian region. For the research part, we focus on technical, policy and social aspects,' Prof. Kumar explained.
On the first day, the workshop included a presentation on the framework and issues of ACCReP, an overview of climate change research activities in Asian countries by policy makers, guidelines for parallel group sessions on review of issues/activities and a Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) matrix. On the second day, the workshop's discussion mainly involved review of issues/activities and the LFA in three sectors: power, transport and manufacturing, building and services.
At the end of the workshop, the participants were able to identify research issues to be addressed by the proposed research programme, the activities to be carried out by AIT and the participating institutions, and the expected outputs of the research activities.
'This workshop could make AIT a leading research institution on climate change in the region. We also expect research fellows to visit AIT to carry out research relating to this issue. The workshop further creates networking with over 30 participating institutions and numerous government agencies. At the same time, the Asian region will reap the major benefits, since the capacity of researchers will be enhanced, and through activities like this, we fulfill our mandate to serve the needs of the region,' Prof. Kumar concluded.