In June 2019, GEST in partnership with the former Curriculum Development Team (CDT) of 2012, and the support of the Icelandic Foreign Ministry, conducted a short training course on Gender and Climate Change in Mbale town, Uganda. The CDT team updated the curriculum since 2012 and adapted it to the 2019 context. The training was attended by 30 specialists from the Karamoja region, Bududa, and Mbale representing different sectors within district local governments, and representatives of CSOs. The training was led by the Course Development Team consisting of Beatrice Mukasa from Makarere University, Lawrence Aribo and Bob Natifu from Uganda Meteorology Authority, and Uganda Climate Change Department at the Ministry of Water and Environment and Maria Nandago, UNU-GEST coordinator.
Description
The short training course on Gender and Climate Change builds on the curriculum and training initiated, developed, and piloted in partnership with the GEST programme at the University of Iceland, and the School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University in Kampala. This effort was part of a larger umbrella partnership between the Government of Uganda (GoU), the Ministry for Water and Environment (Climate Change Unit) and the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in Uganda, and the three Nordic development partners in Uganda; Iceland, Norway, and Denmark.
The short course is designed to bridge the gap between the acknowledgment that climate change has gender specific-effects and impacts and the importance of adopting a gender approach to finding solutions to the causes and effects of climate change. The main intention of the short course, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive link between gender and climate change and to advance gender-responsive policy and practice when addressing the challenges of climate change. An external evaluation conducted in 2013 deemed this short course highly successful, with a positive impact beyond the planned outcomes, recommending that development partners should further explore initiatives related to the short course, both within and outside of Uganda.