Identifying capacity development priorities for oceans

UNESCO/IOC Capacity Development

GEO Capacity-building Committee – 6th Meeting

Hannover, Germany, 13-14 February 2008

Joannès BerqueIOC Capacity development section j.berque@unesco.org

IOC Capacity Development key guiding principle: self-driven

Letting the beneficiary institute drive the cooperation

• Institute main driver from conception to implementation – ownership of activities

• Work with ministries or institute directors that answer regularly to ministries – relevance to national priorities

• Performance to be measured on: ownership, relevance, sustainability – and then impact, effectiveness, etc.

• Based on success/failures of decades of international cooperation (at IOC and in other fields than marine sciences)

IOC Self-driven capacity development: implementation

• Work at level of organisations – IOC has long experience training individual scientists – Complemented with cooperation at the level of organisations

• environment is essential for trained scientist to apply skills • no sustainability of acquired skills without institute support to the scientists

coming back

• Implementation started 2 years ago (Sida funds) – 100 institutes - directors or senior scientists – 75 countries (Africa, LAC, SE Asia)

The sunset clause: obsolete ourselves

from capacity development to catalysing collaboration between peers wherever they reside

One challenge: Global systems needs

vs. local priorities in ocean sciences

Global system science priorities:

• Are driven by ~ 10 countries

• Address large scale (1000km) deep ocean, mid-basin

• Need large computers, large bandwidths, large budgets

• Target outputs are publications in blue-water oceanography periodicals

• Societal benefits often indirect or long-term

Developing countries marine science priorities typically:

•Concern many more countries

•Address local scale (100m-100km)

•Use small computers, small bandwidths, and small budgets

•Target outputs for immediate, visible applications to urgent issues: fisheries, erosion, pollution, economic development in coastal zone

Global system needs vs. local priorities in capacity development

Global system requires capacity-building for:

•Launching & maintaining Argo floats

•In-situ validations

•New sensors validation & applications

•Continuous collection of data in standard format and provision of these data to global systems

Developing countries expressed priorities in building technical skills for:

•Local, issue-based measurements

•“old sensors” applications – SSTs

•coastal modelling

•Affordable internet bandwidth

Address the global needs through the local needs First develop capacity to solve local urgent problems

Then the contribution to global science comes

Determining priorities for capacity-development

Ministries

Directors View for the longer term Growth of the institute

Scientists

Required services and products for national priorities

Training and infrastructure needed to develop products or services

Regional workshop for directors

Urgent technical training and infrastructure

Priorities for a new

regional project

Longer term Higher education

Networking

Proposal-writing workshop

Or use previous similar process output – e.g. NEPAD priorities

Earth observations for what? Issue-based vs. tool-based approach

Caveat of international but isolated club of old friends promoting a tool that has lost its relevance

1 Identify an issue in the coastal zone

•Government drive for addressing•with national experts •of high national priority

2 Determine the science

needed for national Expert to propose solutions

3 Corresponding CD in earth observations,

modelling, data management …

Output, Results Evaluation

Self-driven CD: schematic

Leadership development workshops for directors

Innovative, good feedback, catalysed change process

Bid-writing and team-building workshops

Project leaders attend Know-how to compete for international funds

National priorities Institute growth plans

Technical workshops Often request is on modelling, GIS, remote sens

Project scientists attend

Competitive Proposal to

funding agencies

Institutes earn funds for their

projects Conceived by them,

within institute growth plan

Directors workshops

Coastal modelling workshop field trip, Maputo Institute priorities

Summarising

• Self-driven - foreign-driven

• Local needs – global needs

• Issue-based - tool-based

Proposal-writing workshops: increasing flow of funds to nationally-conceived projects

• Motivation – Much of the HR of many institutes in developing countries work on

foreign-conceived projects – implications for ownership, relevance and sustainability

– Large proportion of funds for marine/environmental science in the South are channelled back to the donor-country institutes

– Many reasons for this, one is few competitive proposals from developing countries – it takes practice to write and submit proposals

• Enhance the know-how to compete for international funds – Hire a “proposal-writing” consultant with excellent fund-raising record – Conduct workshops to transfer this know-how to project leaders

• Another output: a bankable project proposal based on priorities determined by institute directors

Accra bid development

Mombassa bid-writing

Proposal-writing workshops implementation

• Process was begun in Eastern Africa, replicated in Western Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean (First bid submission in the next few months!!

• Critical factors: – Directors must be involved from conception – Team-building between project leaders is essential – Timeframe: 1-2 years after directors express their priorities

• An approach applicable to COAST-MAP-IO ???– Obtain much needed additional funds – COAST-MAP-IO may be a great platform to conceive and

develop projects with strong regional ownership – Could ensure sustainability of benefits of the project in

for the safety from marine hazards in the region