At the 25th UN climate change conference (COP25) in Madrid in December 2019, Dr Karsten Hess (BMBF) presented the two CLIENT II projects CLIMAFRI and RAIN. The side event was organised by the Science Policy Interface (SPI), an accompanying project to the CLIENT II funding measure.

A new video has been produced to introduce a wider audience to the aims and objectives of the CLIENT II funding programme, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The video highlights the programme’s role in facilitating international cooperation to develop innovative and sustainable climate, energy, environmental and resource solutions. It also explains its pioneering approach to promoting joint research and development projects between research institutes and businesses in Germany and emerging economies or developing countries.

On 27 November, German and Moroccan partners launched the I-WALAMAR project (Sustainable Technologies and Services for Water and Land Management in Morocco) at the University of Moulay Ismail in Meknès, Morocco.

Last year involved plenty of highlights for the CLIMAFRI project. In June 2019, the project team held its kick-off event in Benin and Togo to mark the start of the three-year endeavour to co-develop and co-implement adaptation strategies for sustainable management of flood risk and natural resources in the transboundary Lower Mono River catchment. Since then, they have organised a series of workshops, studied one of the most severe floods in the region in recent years, and presented their work at COP25 in Madrid.

The accredited radionuclide laboratory IAF-Radioökologie GmbH in Radeberg near Dresden, which coordinates the CLIENT II project TRANSPOND, organised a joint placement for Kyrgyz and Uzbek radiochemists from 11 to 15 November 2019.

Members of the German-Brazilian consortium for the REGINA project met for a joint workshop in Brazil from 12 - 14 November 2019.

WISUTEC Umwelttechnik GmbH invited project partners from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to Germany for a workshop about the latest progress in developing the transnational environmental information system within the framework of the TRANSPOND project.

Strong German-Vietnamese cooperation on sustainability research: on 30 October 2019, the third German-Vietnamese Science Day took place in Hanoi. Around 200 participants from the academic, private, and public sectors and intermediary organizations presented a wide variety of bilateral projects on sustainability research.

On 4 and 5 November, German and Vietnamese partners, along with the local BMBF project office in Vietnam, project-executing agency DLR and local stakeholders, launched the project "SHRIMPS" ("Solar-Aquaculture Habitats as Resource-Efficient and Integrated Multilayer Production Systems") in the Mekong Delta.

The CLIENT II project SAND! officially started in October 2019.