The objective of this national workshop on climate services is to bring together national institutions in charge of climate, weather, water and hydrological forecasting with two key potential user groups of these forecasts: development planners, policy makers at national level as well as their decentralized technical services across all climate sensitive sectors in the country (civil protection, agriculture, livestock, health, disaster management, tourism, infrastructure, transport, etc.). This will ensure the production of relevant climate services and thus promote better management of climate risks by vulnerable populations living in communities at risk and exposed to natural disasters.
It is expected from the workshop, a better and mutual understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the structures involved, this process will support disaster risk managers and those who ware under the risk, in their efforts to access, leverage and act on the predictions of the state of the atmosphere based on science, leading to more informed decision-making on climate risk management. Naturally these, added to other actions contribute to sustainable development of countries through a better resilience to climate change.
At the end of the three days of interaction between the participants, the proposed workshop will achieve the following specific objectives:
- Identify climate, meteorological and hydrological information needs of development planners, decision-makers at the national level and their decentralized technical services across all climate-sensitive sectors, to enable the production of relevant climate services to support decision-making at the community level, according to a process that always put the concerns of communities under risk (ultimate end users of climate services) in the center of the planning;
- Identify gaps that prevent adequate / effective responses to the needs of the climate services user community;
- Establish communication channels, both for climate services communication and feedbacks, so that issues and concerns from the user are heard and addressed by climate researchers and scientists;
- Define how the conclusions of this National Workshop on Climate Services, and hence climate services, will be used as an important input into the development of national development plans across all climate-sensitive sectors;
- Recommend next steps to better design, implement, monitor and evaluate the steps to operationalization of the Gambia National Climate Services Framework;
- Develop a roadmap that will be a consensual basis for the development of a strategic plan and an action plan of the National Framework of Climate Services of the Gambia.
