We4Climate is a joint initiative between the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) under the Indo-German bilateral project "Climate Change Adaptation in Rural Areas of India (CCA-RAI)". As part of the initiative, the programme "Enabling Climate Action through Knowledge Campaign: A Popular Lecture Series on Climate Change and Sustainable Development" was organised in four Indian states including Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. The objective of this campaign was to promote a dialogue for knowledge exchange and experience sharing about climate change challenges and strategies for climate action among different stakeholders.
A total of 16 lecture cum seminar events were organised in the four states and were attended by diverse groups of participants including government officials, policymakers, students, researchers, academics, NGO representatives, practitioners and many interested persons. The campaign stimulated knowledge exchange in a two-pronged manner: lecture sessions delivered by subject experts followed by interactive thematic group discussions among the wide spectrum of participants. This approach was inspired from the Talanoa Dialogue, an inclusive, participatory and transparent discussion between different stakeholders adopted during the international climate negotiations. Moreover, four informative booklets, one for each project state, briefly explaining climate change, its impacts in India and good practice examples from the project states were developed and shared with the participants, speakers and other dignitaries along with eco-friendly pens made with recycled newspapers at CEE.