Teaching climate change and the United Nations system

Rationale of the conference

Climate change is undoubtedly the most pressing global issue of our time. For addressing the complex multi-stakeholder and multilevel challenges associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation an appropriate knowledge base is needed not only among public authorities but also among civil society, business sector etc. in order to have problem aware constituencies in the countries of the world supporting with their attitudes and actions governments towards bold future oriented global climate change action.

UN system plays an important role in “Teaching Climate Change” in several ways:
- It is obvious that a global challenge like climate change can be addressed effectively only with global coordination and cooperation among relevant stakeholders. As United Nations system (e.g. UNFCCC, UNEP, ..) is the central institutional framework for global governance responses to the climate change challenge, it is important to build capacities worldwide on the functioning of the UN system;
- at the same time UN organizations like UNESCO, UNITAR, UNDP etc. play an important role as provider and facilitator of climate change education and last but not least
- UN system plays somehow the role of a lighthouse for climate change awareness building activities of global civil society (and e.g. national UN associations) and there is a need for a strategic approach to partnerships in this area, too.

The countries in South-east Europe are facing similar climate change challenges. On the one hand scientific climate change models predict especially serious climate change impacts in SEE but on the other hand SEE countries have also some kind of “window of opportunity” open as they are currently reforming and modernizing their socio-economic systems and governance structures in the context of EU integration processes and there is a chance to adapt relatively early to climate change in a joint effort of mobilizing national, European and official development assistance resources and to foster EU integration of the SEE region through joint climate change action.

Therefore the issue of “Teaching Climate Change” will be addressed at this conference in a regional setting as “2nd CEE/SEE Regional Colloquium - Capacity Building on Global Governance and the UN System”.

Goals of the conference

- Support effective climate change adaptation and mitigation in SEE (in the context of EU integration) by means of improved science communication and targeted educational processes
- Support scientific capacity building and capacity building in Higher education sphere and in diplomatic training on global governance and climate change
- Inspire educational system(s) reform/modernisation towards future orientation, problem solving competencies and global citizenship in SEE countries
- Facilitate networking and interaction of conference participants and harness the potentials of ICT for global governance and CC knowledge management and learning with concrete follow-up project initiatives
- Highlight and discuss synergy potentials through policy coherence/inter-ministerial coordination and cooperation on global governance and climate change capacity building
- Feed into coordination and cooperation processes of UN system institutions on CC capacity building
- Raising public awareness on climate change and the UN (especially also on local/community level)
- Promote Involvement of civil society and business sector
- Involve young researchers/students