Results of the PRODIGY postgrad course 2020/2021
In the process of the 7-months’ PRODIGY course, the five intercultural and interdisciplinary Working Groups engaged quite heterogeneously in the various issue areas. Equipped with the philosophy of peer-learning, self-defined research questions were tackled during weekly working group sessions.
Group 1, “Functional diversity of soils” engaged in the deeper understanding of the role of symbiosis and the diverse functions of mycorrhiza in soil ecosystems. Accordingly, the working group produced an animated video, “Symbiosis for Survival” and a podcast on “The role of mycorrhiza”. The target for those products are persons who engage in environmental education activities in rural communities and urban areas.
Group 2, “Non-timber forest products (NTFP’s), sustainability and conservation”, engaged in a virtual SWOT-analysis and produced a data-rich working-paper, “Perspectives and challenges in the extraction of non-timber forest products for their sustainability and conservation in protected areas in the MAP region”. The target groups for this paper are community members and technicians working in the area.
Group 3, “Conflicts in the MAP-region”, engaged in a comparative analysis of conflicts in the MAP-region applying a virtual field research approach. The working-paper, “Land and Territory Conflicts in the South-West Amazon: The Case of the MAP Region” is directed towards technicians, project-managers, NGOs and community leaders.
Group 4, “Regional and Global Climate Change”, engaged in manifold activities directed towards students from high school and an interested urban public in climate change. The videos: “Flying Rivers”, “Climate change in the Amazon” and “Climate & Migration” were already exhibited during the UNFCCC-Regional Climate weeks 2021. Furthermore, WG 4 produced the working-paper, “Global issues seen from the Southwestern Amazon. A review on impacts and drivers of climate change in the MAP region”.
Group 5, “Global Governance and Science Production”, tackled the questions, how science can contribute to global environmental governance. The task proved to be very instructive but difficult in its realization; working-group 5 managed to organize the exhibition of the WG-4- videos during the UNFCCC-Regional Climate weeks 2021 in Latin America.
The results were distributed in the MAP-region via social and print media.
The approximately 50 course-participants from 12 countries shared some of their experiences with the following group and here you can find the webseminar we organized to present all the results of the course 2020/21.
Content created by the different working groups during the course
This is a video about the “flying rivers” in the Amazon. A flying river or aerial river is an analogy that describes plumes of water vapor and clouds transported by trade winds and low-level jets. Low-level jets are wind channels of the lowe atmosphere and are crucial for transporting moisture across the globe. This video was created by group 4 during the Prodigy post-graduate course 2020/21.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=645UTcTf6pI&t=30s
This video is about climate change in the Southwestern Amazon. This video is a result of the PRODIGY postgrad course 2020/21 and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmjII3sIiRo&t=38s
In this video the participants of working group 4 try to explain what migration is about and how it is a topic related to the Southwestern Amazon.
https://youtu.be/W6Hk7nbdFCE
