Emerging Paradigms of Capacity Building in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract

As emphasized in the Paris Agreement effective capacity building is vital to enable developing countries to take strong climate action. However such capacity building systems cannot rely solely on our age old systems of individualized instructions and certification through educational institutions. The target groups to be capacitated have strong livelihood concerns and also possess tacit knowledge to address their issues. This rich pool of tacit knowledge needs to be blended with structured knowledge of the Educational Institutions and should be aimed at finding solutions in real life settings. Paradigmatically new approaches for adaptation and mitigation activities would go a long way in realizing these development goals. Distance education as a philosophy and as a methodology is favorably positioned to respond to the climate change impact by creating systems which are outward looking, reason driven and involving multi stakeholder’s environment. The authors suggest a step further in this direction to create paradigmatically new capacity building systems for climate change. The idea is to have a paradigm shift in the university education from being structured with a predetermined curriculum and one which is based on individual certification to a contextualized learning based on practical knowledge, real life experiences for exploring solutions in consultation with the community. The chapter would focus on how distance learning would create such opportunities and at the same time provide for capacity building programmes for climate change impact and its aftermath.