On April 6 a country-specific training #7 “Development of community-specific local adaptation strategies for the CoM signatories in Armenia” was held for the singnatories of the EC ''Covenant of Mayors-East'' project.

The training was attended by dozens of qualified professionals from the Covenant member municipalities, who are involved (or should be involved) in the development and implementation of SECAPs under the Covenant.

In the framework of EC ''Covenant of Mayors-East'' project Union of Communities of Armenia regularly organizes capacity-building trainings for Covenant Signatories in relevant fields to assist communities in implementing their commitments more effectively and properly.

Artem Kharazyan, National Expert of the Project, provided the participants with an overview of the development of the Covenant of Mayors initiative in Armenia and the activities of the Covenant of Mayors East project, noting the main achievements of the project, the support provided to the communities, and the upcoming events.

The experts of the Project represented the issues such as climate change and its implications on national and local level, adaptation to climate change and its role in mitigation of climatic risks, overview of typical climate change risks (hazards) and affected sectors in line with the Covenant of Mayors methodologies. The climate change risk self-assessment questionnaire (example of Tashir municipality) developed for CoM signatories was introduced.

The number of the Armenian communities joining the new Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy is growing, reaching 17 as of February 2021. Along with calculation of Baseline Emission Inventory (BEI) and development of mitigation measures, the new signatories with CoM 2030 commitments are committed to assess climatic risks and vulnerabilities (RVA) and identify the most cost-effective and specific adaptation measures to be integrated in the corresponding section of their SECAPs.

However, due to the lack of local capacities in RVA and adaptation, most of the signatories are not able to conduct necessary assessments and develop adaptation measures. As a result, a large number of SECAPs with already completed BEI and mitigation part remain unfinished due to the lack or insufficiency of information on climatic risks and adaptation.

The capacity building training is aimed to address this gap by: i) updating the target signatories on global and local aspects of climate change, climatic risks and adaptation; presenting the ongoing and planned adaptation initiatives in Armenia; ii) introducing the methodology for self-assessment and prioritization of community-specific climatic hazards; iii) providing an overview of key adaptation measures that can be implemented by CoM signatories; iv) introducing the local experience in implementation of the adaptation projects and organizing a practical session (exercise) to help the signatories to conduct self-assessment of community-specific climatic risks and vulnerabilities and to identify corresponding adaptation measures.