Many European institutions, including several national hydrometeorological services, universities, private companies, and donor organisations , are involved in projects aiming at improving weather and climate services in developing countries. This new session wants to foster the exchange of information on recent, ongoing, or planned initiatives in developing countries and provide a platform for exchanging know-how on effective development cooperation. It aims at creating an opportunity for multidisciplinary scientific as well as strategic discussion in the field of development cooperation in meteorology and climate. The session invites contributions on activities carried out in initiatives aiming at enabling countries from the developing world to provide improved weather and climate services, such as

● the improvement of technical and organizational infrastructure,
● the implementation and optimization of procedures and methods, capacity building for technical and general management
● the improvement of education and training,
● the facilitation and fostering of international collaboration, and
● the coordination of donors and funding opportunities in development cooperation.

Particularly welcome are presentations on lessons learnt from past or ongoing development initiatives, examples of good practice and success stories, but also reports on difficulties and challenges encountered in development collaboration, as well as meta-initiatives aiming at facilitating communication and collaboration. Scientific discussion on the contents of intervention measures is also welcome, focusing on the impact and the sustainability of the scientific intervention, or highlighting special aspects in the context of development cooperation. Pure technical and methodological discussions, however, are left to the different topical sessions in the OSA programme stream.