Climate Protection Fellowships support young talents worldwide

International network for decision-makers in the field of climate change mitigation and environmental conservation continues to grow.

The German Environment Ministry will award another
20 Climate Protection Fellowships this year. Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Environment Ministry (BMUB), bid farewell to last year’s fellowship holders on 11 January 2017. Hailing from various countries, including Peru and Madagascar, they are working on the consequences of climate change in their home nations. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has awarded international climate protection and resource conservation fellowships to young experts and young professionals from developing countries and emerging economies since 2010. These fellowships are financed with funding from BMUB’s International Climate Initiative (IKI).

Schwarzelühr-Sutter: ‘This fellowship programme is encouraging the development of an international network of future decision-makers in the field of climate change mitigation and environmental conservation. These individuals acquire a range of expertise during their time in Germany, enabling them to more fully understand and more effectively reduce the potential consequences of climate change in their home countries.’

The seventh year of fellowship holders are set to begin their stay in Germany in March 2017.

The sixth year included researchers, and experts from ministries, government agencies and courts involved in pursuing innovative projects. For example, Tsinampoizina Randriamahefasoa, a mathematician from Madagascar, for the first time modelled high quality climate change scenarios for her home region, and Thi Binh Minh Hoang, an ecologist from the Mientrung Institute for Scientific Research in Viet Nam, examined the cultivation of energy crops on tracts of land in Central Viet Nam which had been contaminated with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange.

20 fellowship holders from Brazil, Cameroon, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, South Africa, Uzbekistan and Viet Nam spent one year in Germany. The fellowship programme is organised by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in collaboration with several partners: the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) at TU Dresden, the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
(GIZ) GmbH, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Renewables Academy (RENAC), Berlin, and the Federation of German Industry (BDI).