Workshop for students: learning from the IPCC special report on Land, SRCCL

Date : 5 and 6 February 2020

Location : AgroParisTech premises located 19 avenue du Maine 75015 Paris (Montparnasse area).

Abstract :

Students (master 2 level), as part of their teaching module on ‘biosphere-atmosphere interactions at large spatial scale’, were asked to work on issues developed in one of the latest IPCC special report that came out in August 2019, the special report on climate and land (https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/). They worked in groups of 5 to 6 and were asked to focus on specific scientific questions (themes described below).

The students are following the masters degree called :

• Climate, Land Use, Ecosystem Services (CLUES)
• Interactions Climat Environnement (ICE)
• Water, Air, Pollution and Energy (WAPE)

Their objectives were to: 

• Use the most recent IPCC reports to respond to the question/s [AR5 and following special reports + specific special reports]
• Identify and describe the processes involved
• Identify whether the robustness of the scientific conclusions have changed from one report to the other
• Identify the new findings from one report to the other
• Ideally, identify the potential remaining gaps, unresolved questions

This workshop was the final step in their work. They have produced a written report prior to the workshop and they presented their conclusions during the workshop. They had the opportunity to listen to a specialist in the theme they studied, and to took some time to interact with him/her.

For each theme, a three-stroke waltz with about 40 min. per stroke: students report on their work; an invited keynote speaker digs further into the questions; finally a discussion takes place between the students and the invited speaker, orchestrated by a moderator taken from the teaching community.