Our pilots
Two places to begin.
Much to understand.
Ghana is the founding education pilot. Nepal–Hindu Kush Himalaya is the second pilot direction and scientific flagship. Their questions are connected; their delivery arrangements require individual care.
Pilot 01 · Ghana
Understanding begins
where people live.
The Ghana pilot is proposed as a practical beginning for the Academy’s education programme in an African setting: a shared foundation brought into conversation with local teaching and local evidence.
The educational question
How can a programme help learners explain the environmental conditions around them, use reliable information and recognise the limits of a conclusion?
A locally agreed enquiry might follow water or a familiar material through a community. Science and social studies provide a starting point, with links to mathematics, computing and career technology where the school’s syllabus supports them.
The partnership needed
The proposed route is an existing education organisation or teacher-training institution, with a named local coordinator and agreed receiving schools or learning settings.
The English master is the planned basis, with limited Ghanaian-language support. The host, school language, participants, timetable and local case all require confirmation. The founding pilot is separate from the 25 First Wave entries.
Pilot 02 · Nepal / Hindu Kush Himalaya
The mountain is only
the beginning of the story.
Snow, glaciers and high-mountain landscapes are connected to river systems, communities and choices far downstream. Nepal offers a focus for a scientific and educational flagship within the wider Hindu Kush Himalaya.
The proposed enquiry connects cryosphere science, environmental pathways, water and the interpretation of risk. It should help learners understand both a changing system and the care required to explain a particular event.
A recent reminder
Precision is a form of care.
The destructive flood in Nepal’s Rasuwa district on 26 August 2026 illustrates why mechanisms matter. ICIMOD describes an ice-rock avalanche and downstream debris-flow cascade; its initial advisory treated the trigger as under investigation.
That event must be distinguished from the 8 July 2025 glacial lake outburst originating on the Purepu Glacier in Tibet. A reference to “melting glacier water” alone would leave out the processes that make these hazards different.
The regional effects of warming provide context. They do not, by themselves, establish the contribution of climate change to either individual disaster.
Read ICIMOD’s accountWhere the Academy can work
The pilot direction is Nepal. Tibet forms part of the wider transboundary scientific context, but field access there is outside the Academy’s present programme scope. Published evidence may still inform a carefully bounded regional explanation.
What needs to be established
A suitable research and education partner, a defined locality, the evidence question, delivery access, language, review arrangements and a separate resource plan.
The 16 October education funding schedule prices Ghana and the First Wave portfolio. It does not establish a funded Nepal deployment.
One principle,
different responsibilities.
Both pilots begin with a locally answerable question and an accountable partnership. Neither a national risk score nor an ambitious website can substitute for the work of understanding a place.