The Earsmus+ “EMPOwer ANDES societies to improve adaptation to climate change through cocreation of climate services” project (EMPOANDES; http://empoandes.eu; 1 Dec 2025 – 30 Nov 2028) got funded, and it is coordinated by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Institute of University for Research in Sustainability, Climate Change, and Energy Transition (URV- IU-RESCAT, Spain). It is the project of the Erasmus+ Call: ERASMUS-EDU-2025-CBHE (Capacity building in the field of higher education) and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union under project# 101236788. It is coordinated by the Prof. Enric Aguilar, and project manager is Dr. Jon Xavier Olano Pozo.

The Andean Region of the Latin America 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. The EMPOANDES objective is to develop official education actions at different levels for students, professionals and citizens.

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. The project will 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. The project implies the elaboration of short-, medium- and long-term competency-based approaches to academic actions, courses, training and materials with the use of pedagogical techniques for training of specialists at various levels. The main field of the courses is climate services, but not only. EMPOANDES will 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 consortium targets the Andean region forming a multidisciplinary partnership composed of 16 leading institutions in total from Europe (the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the University of Patras, and the University of Helsinki) and from Latin America (universities and national meteorological services from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia), as well as key research centers like the Centro Internacional de Investigación del Fenómeno del Niño, collaboratively addressing climate education and services.

EMPOANDES work will encompass within several WorkPackages (WP): WP1: Project Management and Coordination; WP2: Definition of High Education Institutions and Community Needs; WP3: Curricula Development; WP4: Staff Capacity Building; WP5: Piloting Capacity Development and Community Empowerment; WP6: Dissemination and Communication

Text by: EMPOANDES Coordinator Prof. Enric Aguilar & Project Manager Dr. Jon Xavier Olano Pozo.