Piloting the development of a training program to equip analysts and policymakers in the use of agricultural, evidence-based policy analysis and leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa with a component on climate science. A collaboration between PCC graduate students and the Evans School Policy and Research group. 

Written by Connor Lewis-Smith and Kristin Hayman

Many economies in Sub-Saharan Africa rely heavily on agriculture. With many crops in the region already growing in climatic ranges near their climate thresholds and with farmers’ heavy reliance on rainfall, Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Due to the remarkable heterogeneity across the region, both climate change mitigation and adaptation must be locally specific. However, like most places around the globe, there is a great deal of confusion across the region about foundational concepts of climate change (e.g., greenhouse gasses, causes and impacts of climate change, etc.) and how climate change does and will impact agriculture in the region. This confusion serves as a major barrier for developing and deploying the most impactful policies and solutions at the local level.  

The Evans School Policy Analysis and Research Group (EPAR) is working to address these barriers by creating a capacity development program to foster agricultural analysts’ and policymakers’ analytical and leadership skills to improve evidence-based decision making in Africa. For our Graduate Certificate in Climate Science (GCeCS), we were eager to co-develop a curriculum on Climate Science Communication with our EPAR collaborators.  Specifically, we aimed to help identify and address climate science that would be critical to include in the curriculum. In this blog post, we hope to share some of the challenges and successes of our process.

What Did We Do? 

Acknowledging the different political, cultural, intellectual, and lived experiences across potential fellows who would be enrolled in the training program, the first major step in our process was designing and conducting a pre-survey. This involved the creation of a google form with 18 different questions. The survey was aimed at eliciting baseline knowledge of key climate science concepts, common mis-conceptions, and familiarity with initiatives and approaches to address climate issues. We sent this survey via email to an identified group of potential fellows. This included university students as well as mid-career professionals involved with agricultural policy design and implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa. While some respondents were currently working within the United States, a majority were currently both living and working directly in Africa. 

After reviewing the pre-curriculum survey results and defining topical areas in which our audience would benefit from further training and skill enhancement, we created a series of Youtube videos to convey the curriculum to our audience:

• Introductory Video (video)
• Video 1: Greenhouse Gasses, the Greenhouse Effect, Global Warming (video)
  • Provides basic climate science information to help you understand the root causes of global warming and climate change.
• Video 2: Global Impacts of Climate Change (video)
  • Provides an overview of select global climate impacts: precipitation, drought, flooding. 
• Video 3: Common Misconceptions about Climate Change (video)
  • Discusses and debunks misconceptions related to climate change.
• Video 4: Climate Change Initiatives (video)
  • Introduces global climate change initiatives and how they could be useful for agriculture policy makers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
• Video 5: Soil Erosion and Climate Change (video)
  • Discusses soil erosion as it relates to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa and introduces practices to help reduce erosion in agriculture.

We opted for presenting the content of the curriculum as Youtube videos to allow for the most engagement by potential fellows on their own time. We also include subtitles on all videos given that many students would not be primary English speakers. The video links were sent to recipients of our pre-curriculum survey emails (i.e., prospective curriculum students). Finally, we attached short surveys to each of the Youtube videos to gauge their effectiveness as well as solicit feedback from our viewers. 

How Did It Go? 

Based on the post-curriculum survey responses, all videos were all fairly successful at improving our audience’s understanding of the topics. For example, the entirety of post-curriculum survey respondents for video 1 demonstrated an understanding of climate change fundamentals that was improved from the pre-curriculum survey respondents. 

However, there are a number of areas that could be refined as the curriculum development process continues. For example, post-curriculum survey responses indicated that our audience had an interest in knowing more about how climate impacts are related to communities and economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, our curriculum likely would have been more engaging and impactful if we had included more of this type of content. This is further evidence of the importance of connecting climate impacts directly to people’s lives. 

We also received feedback that our video delivery speed was considered a bit fast by our audience. This was eye opening given that we actively tried to speak slowly when recording our videos. If future students plan to present to an international audience that is not necessarily primary English speakers, these videos could provide a baseline for determining your delivery speed.  

We also learned a lot about how to approach a highly collaborative process with a variety of collaborators and a diverse audience. We expect that the following lessons learned will likely help future students be successful as they complete capstone projects:

• Give yourself lots of time – Everything will take longer than you think (especially when targeting an international audience), so give yourself more time than you expect to finish everything.
• Set expectations – From the start, be clear with your collaborators about the project objectives, what you will do, what you will not have time for, and what role each person will play. Scoping is very important. 
• Be ready to be flexible – While it is important to set a clear plan, it is also important to know that things will not go as planned. So welcome the opportunity to adjust course, as needed.

Final Thoughts

In all, we really enjoyed the experience working with our EPAR collaborators and the curriculum developing and piloting process. We are happy to report that, based on our post-curriculum survey results, our curriculum appeared to teach the desired concepts fairly effectively and the feedback on how to improve them is easily interpretable. We are also happy to learn that our collaborators plan on building on the lessons and insights from our projects to expand the development of additional curriculum for their training program. 

This has left both our collaborators and us with improved insights into how to communicate climate science with both agricultural economics university students and mid-career officials across a range of African countries. We learned that it is critical to keep communication slow, articulate, and clear while also connecting concepts of climate change directly to their impacts on people. This might feel redundant for those of us coming from the climate sciences, but it is critically important for individuals involved in the policy realm.   

For students completing capstone projects in the future, good luck! And get yourself off to a good start by having a solid plan. Make those plans as clear as possible and keep strong communication throughout the process with your collaborators. Finally, remember that flexibility is key, knowing that you can adjust the plan as needed. 

Connor Lewis-Smith is a graduating Master of Marine Affairs student from the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) who completed this capstone project for the Graduate Certificate in Climate Science. With his masters thesis exploring risk in the West Coast commercial fishing fleet, he brought his passion for large spatial scale social and biological research to this project. This work was also inspired by his lifelong passion for cross-cultural communication in addition to his familial connection to East Africa. 

Kristin will graduate from the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) in 2023 with a Master of Marine Affairs. Like Connor, Kristin completed this capstone project as part of her pursuit of a Graduate Certificate in Climate Science through the UW’s Program on Climate Change. Kristin is a member of Dr. Phil Levin’s Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Lab at UW and her thesis research project will develop a framework for implementing Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) that considers the capacity of the solution to lessen climate risks to health, abate environmental health disparities, and avoid or reduce carbon emissions.