News

GRÓ Annual Report 2020-2021

27 June 2022

The Annual Report for the first two years of GRÓ‘s activity, 2020-2021, is now available online. GRÓ ̶ The International Centre for Capacity Development, Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Societal Change was established on 1 January 2020 and operates under the auspices of UNESCO as a Category 2 Centre in Iceland. The Centre operates under its own legal identity and is guided and overseen by a Governing Board, appointed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, and set up as a unit within the Ministry.

Four training programmes, that have been an important part of Iceland‘s development cooperation portfolio for many decades, operate under GRÓ. These are the Geothermal Training Programme (GTP), the Fisheries Training Programme (FTP), the Land Restoration Training Programme (LRT) and the Gender Studies and Training Programme (GEST).

The annual report covers the first two years of the GRÓ Centre. After a short summary in Icelandic of the main activities of GRÓ during 2020-2021, a more detailed description is provided in English of the work of GRÓ and its four training programmes. Operations in 2020 were greatly disrupted by the global pandemic and three of the programmes had to suspend the arrival of fellows for one year. In 2021 all four GRÓ training programmes were again able to receive fellows. The annual report also covers the finances of the Centre and provides examples of how the work of GRÓ during these first two years has contributed to advancing the SDGs in the Centre’s partner countries.