Capacity building

IGBP is committed to capacity building to address the imbalance between the scientific capabilities of developed and developing countries.

IGBP promotes an array of research-driven capacity building activities to improve the scientific capacity of less developed countries, such as training workshops, summer schools, post-doctoral networks, etc.

In addition, scientists from least developed countries are members of most IGBP research networks and participate in observational campaigns and process studies. Meetings of the IGBP Scientific Committee and IGBP Officers are often held in developing countries, allowing interaction between the IGBP leadership and scientists from the region.

Regional research and capacity building in global-change science is also supported at the inter-governmental level by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN).

IGBP is assisting in the establishment of an African network for global-change research. This network is likely to focus on strengthening collaboration between scientists in Africa and Europe, and will most importantly improve the access to Earth System science and global change funding for African researchers.

The global change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START), originally started by IGBP and now an ESSP project, is instrumental in the regional-based capacity building, specially in areas where the scientific base is too weak to allow participation in international programs in cooperation with IAI and APN.