On April 12, 2021, UNDP and the Ministry of Public Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan held the “Climate Box” handover ceremony at the Agency for Information and Mass Communications under the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan as a party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has several obligations under the UNFCCC, in particular, in the field of providing public access to information on climate change and its consequences, by Article 6 of the Convention - Education, training and public awareness. 

Since 2018, work has been conducted across the country to adapt to the introduction of the "Climate Box" within the school educational process - a learning toolkit for educational institutions developed by the United Nations Development Programme in 2014. The purpose of introducing this toolkit into the educational process is to raise awareness among young people and the public, in general, upon the impact of climate change on the environment. The “Climate Box” has been already successfully tested in 157 schools in Russia. In 2015, the publication was translated into English and presented at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris (COP-21). A year later, the toolkit was introduced in countries of Central Asia: the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Tajikistan.

The "Climate Box" toolkit was adjusted within the framework of a joint UNDP and Adaptation Fund project "Developing climate resilience of farming communities in the drought prone parts of Uzbekistan" with the financial support of the Russian Federation in close cooperation with Uzhydromet and the Republican Education Center of the Ministry of Public Education.

The Republican Education Center has developed a teaching manual for teachers of secondary schools, methodologists of public education departments, specialists of out-of-school educational institutions, class teachers on the use of materials on climatic conditions and characteristics of Uzbekistan in the educational process and out-of-school education. The learning toolkit was successfully piloted in three schools of Tashkent.     

Representatives of the Embassy of the Russian Federation, UNDP, Ministry of Public Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan and Uzhydromet took part in the ceremony of transferring educational materials.

The UNDP’s assistance to Uzbekistan is aimed at achieving common interrelated outcomes, among which the significant attention is paid to climate change adaptation in arid regions of Uzbekistan, the environmental protection and raising awareness on climate change and its consequences among the local population.