The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) says the ongoing compilation of a standard climate change curriculum will create awareness and regulate the effects of climate change on existing and future projects in Nigeria.
Mr Kannan Nadar, it’s Programme Chief, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in the country, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to Nadar, the curriculum is compiled by UNICEF in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and the Netherlands.
He said inputs were drawn from stakeholders on the draft curriculum just as sectoral reviews were on-going.
Nadar said that the curriculum would enhance the development and maintenance of projects, specifically, those in the water and environment sectors.
“Climate change has been recognised as an issue globally so sectors cannot afford not to take it into consideration so all planning should also take into account climate change adaptation requirement.
“It is also important to mainstream climate change into normal sector programming.
“Another thing is unless the people who are working in the sector have the knowledge, nothing can be done further.
“So this climate change curriculum is aimed at developing a curriculum which will address the capacity or the knowledge needs of the sector professionals.
“For example within the country, we have so many water sector professionals working at different levels working at the federal ministry level, the state level and also at the LGA level there are water sanitation officials.
“So by having a standard curriculum, housed in one institution, what we will do is to ensure that there is a regular training programme.
“When you have this kind of training you will have a good pool of people who are aware of climate change and when so once they are aware, they will be able to apply to their activities so this is a start.”
He said that with a ready curriculum, awareness would be enhanced in relation to many project sites in order to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change.
Nadar said different training modules would be refined taking into account the Nigerian environmental situation, while monthly training would be organised for professionals by UNICEF and the National Water Resources Institute (NWRI), Kaduna.
“We have a collaboration with the Netherlands; they are our partners; we are working with them to develop a curriculum for the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector; the activity has already started.
“We will be having this TOT (Training of Trainers) and the review of curriculum; both will be done together; so, we will have the curriculum that will be reviewed, and as part of that, we will do a training of trainers.
“The idea is that this training curriculum will subsequently be so that the training can be more systematically done on a regular basis so once you develop the curriculum and then you train a certain number of trainers; then using those trainers and using the curriculum, you can continue to do training on a more regular basis at (NWRI).
“At the end of the workshops, we will have a standard training curriculum on climate change for Water, Sanitaion and Hygiene (WASH) sector professionals which could be used for training a number of (WASH) people at different levels so that is the good thing about it.’’