Author and Institution:
Karen Anderton, Independent Environmental Consultant
Outline:
In 2008, a partnership between the regional government of Brittany and the UNDP established a climate science and technology hub in Brest, France: ClimSAT. It was initiated with the primary aim of improving access to information on the impacts of climate change for some of the most vulnerable areas in the developing world. Promising and established state-of-the-art technologies, particularly in satellite imagery, were gathered in Brest and data gathered was then shared with other partners, including regional governments in Indonesia, Senegal and Uruguay.
The aim was to enable governments and communities to monitor and model the effects of climate change, and to base climate change and development strategies on accurate, location-specific information. ClimSAT was a concrete example of the increased action regional governments are taking to address climate change. ClimSAT in its original form ceased operation in mid-2011 but was integrated into a wider UNEP programme, the Territorial Approach to Global Change, Scientific Services and Knowledge (TASK). This case study sets out to learn from the experiences of ClimSAT.
