Identifying capacity development priorities for oceans

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Identifying capacity development priorities for
oceans

• UNESCO/IOC Capacity Development
• GEO Capacity-building Committee 6th Meeting
• Hannover, Germany, 13-14 February 2008

Joannès Berque IOC Capacity development section
j.berque_at_unesco.org
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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)

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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
  

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One challenge Global systems needs vs. local
priorities in ocean sciences

• 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 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

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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
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Determining priorities for capacity-development
Urgent technical training and infrastructure
Ministries
Regional workshop for directors
Required services and products for national
priorities
Longer term Higher education Networking
Directors View for the longer term Growth of
the institute
Priorities for a new regional project
Training and infrastructure needed to develop
products or services
Or use previous similar process output e.g.
NEPAD priorities
Scientists
Proposal-writing workshop
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Earth observations for what? Issue-based vs.
tool-based approach

• 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
Caveat of international but isolated club of old
friends promoting a tool that has lost its
relevance
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Self-driven CD schematic
Coastal modelling workshop field trip, Maputo
Institute priorities
Technical workshops Often request is on
modelling, GIS, remote sens Project scientists
attend
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
Competitive Proposal to funding agencies
Directors workshops
Institutes earn funds for their projects
Conceived by them, within institute growth plan
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Summarising

• Self-driven - foreign-driven
• Local needs global needs
• Issue-based - tool-based

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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
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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