The Erasmus+ “EMPOwer ANDES societies to improve adaptation to climate change through cocreation of climate services” project (EMPOANDES; http://empoandes.eu; 1 December 2025 – 30 November 2028) is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. It is coordinated by the Prof. Enric Aguilar and project manager Dr. Jon Xavier Olano Pozo from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Institute of University for Research in Sustainability, Climate Change, and Energy Transition (URV- IU-RESCAT, Spain). The consortium includes 16 Partners from Europe (Spain, Greece, Finland) and from the Latin America (Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, and Chile). The project website is bi-lingual (in English and Spanish languages).

EMPOANDES Objective is to develop official education actions at different levels for students, professionals and citizens of the Andean Region of the Latin America, which is one of the most sensitive areas to climate variability and change. Climate change is modifying the occurrence of extreme events, such as extreme precipitation, floods, droughts, cold waves or heatwaves, and their associated impacts.

EMPOANDES will:

  • encompass the local, national and regional scales to become a key channel to empower the Andean societies, organizations, governments and individuals to face climate change effects;
  • engage with the communities and put them in a central position to co-create, compute and communicate climate information through tools designed for decision-making;
  • elaborate short-, medium- and long-term competency-based approaches to academic actions, courses in climate services, training and materials with use of pedagogical techniques for training of specialists at various levels;
  • induce progress in the access to climate information, capacity development on climate data tools and technologies, a deep understanding of the regional climate, improve the representation in climate models, and coupling with impact-based models is a severe gap in the state-of-art technology.

EMPOANDES Main Activities (January – September 2026)

After the EMPOANDES project kick-off-meeting which took place in a hybrid mode during 20-22 January 2026 (Quito, Ecuador) and was hosted by the Universidad de las Americas (UDLA), the UHEL team established own webpage for the EMPOANDES project and linked it to the main website.

EMPOANDES WorkPackages (WPs) are: WP1 on “Project Management and Coordination”; WP2 on “Definition of High Education Institutions and Community Needs”; WP3: on “Curricula Development”; WP4 on “Staff Capacity Building”; WP5 on “Piloting Capacity Development and Community Empowerment”; and WP6 on “Dissemination and Communication”. Details about the WPs leaders, its duration, objectives, tasks, outputs, and deliverables are available at https://empoandes.eu/wps. The recent Deliverables (as reports) are publicly available: D1.1 “Project Handbook”; D1.2 “Quality Data and Monitoring Plan”; D1.3 “Kick-off Report”; and D6.1 “Communication and Dissemination Plan”.

The capacity building is realised through national workshops and specialized training sessions as events. The co-design workshop on “Shaping Climate Services Educational Strategy” was held during 18-19 June 2026 in Bogota, Columbia. The co-design workshop on “Ecuador Advances in Strengthening Climate Services” was held during 15-16 July 2026 in Quito, Ecuador. Two more co-design workshops are planned also in Peru and Chile.

Specialized 5 training modules are planned. These high-level training modules are aligned with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) competencies: (1) “Fundamental competencies for climate services”, (2) “Data management and climate modeling tools”; (3) “Sector-specific impact analysis methodologies”; (4)  “Communication and user engagement strategies”, and (5) “Sustainability and policy integration”.

The latest news is available at the “News and updates” webpage of the project & disseminated through the LikedIN social network. In particular, the latest regional workshop on “EMPOANDES Expands Regional Synergies at the ENANDES+” took place during 25-28 August 2026 in Asunción, Paraguay. The 1st EMPOANDES General Assembly is planned for the third week of January 2027 in Bogota, Colombia.

Text by: Hanna K. Lappalainen, Alexander Mahura, UHEL-INAR