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Students, policymakers, and stakeholders from Kenya engaged with the IAM COMPACT consortium in a series of workshops held in the city of Mombasa, Kenya during the last week of August. The Mombasa workshops were the first step towards achieving one of the IAM COMPACT objectives: to boost international cooperation, partnership, and capacity during and after the project, by supporting the design of climate pledges and developing scientific and technical capabilities in the selected countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine.
In a two-day session, on August 29-30, students from the Technical University of Mombasa (TUM) were introduced to integrated assessment modelling. The students started from what an energy system is and how to build scenarios before moving onto more advanced notions and training, such as input-output analysis and the complex interactions of resource systems that can be investigated through a nexus approach. The participants engaged in hands-on exercises and discussed about the future of energy, food, water, health, and climate in Kenya. This introductory workshop was the first step towards building a team of students, who will develop an open-access model for integrated policy planning in Kenya using the CLEWs (Climate, Land, Energy, Water) nexus framework in the context of our project.
The initiatives for cooperation and capacity development continued with workshops for policymakers (August 31 and September 1 morning) and other stakeholder groups (September 1 afternoon). The presentations and discussions focused on the use of integrated assessment models in policy as well as on opportunities and challenges for Kenya’s energy and climate transition. The participants also discussed about data exchange with the IAM COMPACT team and the potential for collaboration with the UK’s Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) Programme, which was also represented in the workshops and is highly active in Kenya. Finally, the participants were introduced to modelling with the CLEWs framework by exploring a simple model and different scenarios using the CLEWs interface of the United Nations.
The Mombasa workshops are the first of several IAM COMPACT initiatives to forward integrated modelling capacity at academic and government level in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine.
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