Climate Exchange

cosystems

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provided by Russian colleagues and certain tools and

programmes were obtained free from the Internet

. A

weather research and forecasting model is being devel-

oped by ArmStateHydromet with the Academy of Science

of Armenia

. Nevertheless, building new and developing

existing human capacities remains a challenge, which

needs to be overcome.

Moving beyond a successful pilot

The project targeting the Syunik region has made great

advances and the information produced under the project

meets the interests and expectations of the stakeholders.

It has reflected several principles of the Global Framework

for Climate Services:

• Ensuring greater availability of, access to, and use of

climate services

• Building the capacity of climate-vulnerable developing

countries

• Establishing operational climate services as the core

element of the framework

• Affirming that climate information is primarily an

international public good provided by governments,

which will have a central role in its management

through the framework

• Committing to build the framework through user

provider partnerships that include all stakeholders.

The project experiences and lessons learned will not be

limited to the south-eastern mountainous forests of the

Syunik region. They will also be applied in forest and

protected area management in the central and northern

regions of Armenia and shared with the global commu-

nity through the Adaptation and Learning Mechanism

(www.adaptationlearning.net

A specifically designed brochure on sustainable tourism, developed

and published under the project, was presented during a seminar

bringing together representatives from a range of governmental, non-

governmental, educational and tourism organizations

. Additionally,

representatives of local administrations and community leaders have

participated in trainings on fire prevention and suppression organized

by the project with other partners.

Challenges and requirements

Several challenges in the use of climate information have been revealed

during the implementation of project activities. A lack of corresponding

technical means, software and communication capabilities created diffi-

culties during the assessment of changing climate conditions at the local

scale, and there was a lack of appropriately trained staff at the hydromete-

orological service to carry out tasks such as producing tailored information

for specific user groups and applying downscaling techniques to outputs.

There are still significant uncertainties in the climate change assess-

ments. Seasonal prediction skills are low providing only a general

estimate of the possibility of forest fire without specifying the loca-

tion, time and intensity. There is also scope for improvement of the

seasonal outlooks, which serve as a basis for producing fire risk alerts.

Furthermore, the suggested FRI index has certain weaknesses. The

work to improve the index by including factors such as wind velocity

and duration of dry spells is on-going.

Some technical issues have been resolved through interaction

with experts from other countries, e.g. fire risk methodology was

Image: Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts in Mountain Forest Ecosystems of Armenia” UNDP/GEF Project

Seminars on (A) forest biodiversity and climate change issues for teachers

and pupils in the Syunik region, and (B) sustainable tourism in forest areas

under climate change conditions

Source: Armenian State Hydrometeorological and Monitoring Service

Armenia – Syunik Forests and Sustainable Tourism

– one of the brochures helping to disseminate

information about the project