Capacity building in Uganda for Paris Agreement Reporting

The challenge

Uganda is a non-Annex I Party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  Uganda therefore has legal reporting requirements concerning climate change actions. On 22nd May 2018, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Secretariat approved a mid-sized project “Strengthening the Capacity of Institutions in Uganda to Comply with the Transparency Requirements of the Paris Agreement”.  Aether collaborated with Petromall and the NEXUS International University (NIU) in this project.

To support institutions in Uganda, the project objectives were:

• To build the capacity of key stakeholders to collect, process and input data into the GHG emissions inventory and the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system.
• To test and pilot the GHG emission inventory and MRV system.

The worldwide COVID-19 health crisis resulting in lockdowns in both Uganda and Europe created an additional challenge. Participants and trainers were all working at home. As such the training plan needed to be modified to be delivered entirely remotely, instead of across two in-country visits.

The solution

Aether worked in collaboration with Petromall and the NEXUS International University (NIU) to provide capacity building training in GHG inventory compilation. A bespoke, remotely delivered training program was developed from Aether’s inventory training resources, including drawing on wide expertise across our specialist team. We engaged with over 80 participants to provide interactive training courses in all inventory sectors. 55 staff from across Uganda’s sector teams received in-depth training whilst a further 26 stakeholders received broader training related to GHG inventories, MRV and the IPCC Guidelines.

Aether sector experts supported the Uganda sector teams to produce their sector GHG inventories to practice their inventory compilation skills. This included data collection, compilation and documenting assumptions and methodologies. Estimates produced were in line with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. This training approach focussed on building the capacity of the Uganda experts.

Transparent documentation of data and methodologies was enabled through use of an online secure file sharing system – the MRV portal developed by Aether. This provides a focal point for all compilation spreadsheets, underlying data sets and information on methodology. It will continue to be available to the national experts after the project has finished. The central storage of this information will significantly improve the efficiency of the compilation of future national GHG inventories.

The result

The training courses were accredited by the University and classified as a Continuous Development Programme. Participants in the training course were highly engaged and are now working to fully update Uganda’s national greenhouse gas inventory.

The remote training course received very good feedback from participants. Aether can now confidently offer this format for future training provision. It ensures that trainees get access to multiple experts across the whole inventory team at Aether, it is more inclusive and effective and saves carbon emissions by reducing the need to travel.

This project was funded by the Global Environment Facility through Conservation International. To find out more follow this link: CBIT Uganda

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