A National Seminar on Climate Change was organised on January 26, 27 and 28 by the ClimaSouth project in Ramallah under the Patronage of H. E. Chairperson of the Environmental Quality Authority, Eng. Adalah Al Attirah.

This event was aiming at enabling the Palestinian Authority to improve the management of the climate changes issues by facilitating the dialogue among relevant stakeholders. Structured to raise awareness and train staff on climate actions with the view to make the best use of partner’s supports and successfully envisage medium and long-term strategies to address climate change impacts in the relevant sectors for the country (primarily water & agriculture).

The seminar offered a wide range of presentations covering both adaptation and mitigation issues to all the member of the Climate Change Committee of Palestine, starting with a key session on the science of climate change by Prof Imad Khatib (Polytechnic University, Hebron and Director of the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology) and its regional impacts by Prof. J-P van Ypersele (UCL Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Louvain la Neuve and  Vice President of the IPCC. All participants expressed their interest on those topics and shown readiness in exchanging point of views to further achieve concrete progress, including raising the level of interest of Senior policy makers at Government level. The Head of the EQA concluded that ‘Measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change are essential to achieve economic development in Palestine”.

This event was organised for EQA through the ClimaSouth Focal Point Nedal Katbeh-Bader, Minister Advisor for Climate Change, with the overall support of Ayman Hadj Daoud from the Palestinian Academy for Science and Technology, PALAST (Ramallah) .

Sources: http://www.climasouth.eu/drupal/en/node/231 and here