Building capacities in agriculture to address climate change

The objective of the current proposal is twofold:
• Back to back with the next conference on Climate Smart Agriculture, organised at Montpellier on 16-18 March 2015, organise a side-event to network the different initiatives existing in the world on capacity building about agriculture and climate change issues. Draw the lessons learned about the skills and competences required by the research and development actions led in this area Transform these lessons learned into learning objectives, and hence training systems, comparing possible synopsis curricula and training methods.
• Contribute to organising a European supply in terms of postgraduate education and research in this area, leading to opening a European Master in Agriculture and Climate Change in which the Montpellier units would have a key role. The main organisational lines of this initiative will be presented in the side-event above mentioned, the suggestions for international collaborations will be collected, then organise a second – more restricted- meeting will be organised in May 2015 to fine tune the curriculum,
• In the meantime, precise the role and the contribution that the different Montpellier research units can bring to the training (in Montpellier but also in the other EU Universities), the benefits they can draw from the course (specially through the master thesis and recruitment of doctoral students), the regulation of such a transversal collaboration, and conclude on the organisation and the partnerships of this joint initiative.