WEF Nexus

E-Learning Course: Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: The Nexus between Water, Energy and Food
2020-02-10 - 2020-07-27
Overview
In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far.

Level: Intermediate
Commitment: 4-6 hours/week
Language of Instruction: English
Pass all graded assignments to complete the course

View Syllabus Here
Enrollment and Dates
Enroll can be completed on the Coursera website. This course is offered a 8 weekly intervals with the upcoming enrollment and start dates:

10 February 2020 (enrollment closing 15 February)
6 April 2020 (enrollment closing 11 April)
1 June 2020 (enrollment closing 6 June)
27 July 2020 (enrollment closing 1 August 2020)

Intended Participants
The course is directed toward upper-division undergraduate and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines (environmental sciences, engineering, agricultural sciences, social sciences) as well as professionals (NGOs, think tanks) and policy makers concerned with sustainable development in both developed and developing countries.
Instructors
Mario Giampietro, ICREA Research Professor
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Andrea Saltelli, Guest researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Tarik Serrano, Post-Doc Researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Course Creator
The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is a public university located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. International in its outlook, it is fully consolidated within its local surroundings, and offers quality education in close association with research activity, the transfer of scientific, technological, cultural and educational knowledge, the promotion of its human potential and the responsible management of available resources. The UAB currently offers 81 degrees, 130 official Master Programmes and 183 UAB-specific Masters Degrees. In addition, it offers 174 lifelong learning programmes and 65 PhD Programmes, 27 of which have been distinguished through Quality Awards. The UAB has a total of over 3,500 teaching and research staff, over 2,000 administrative staff and over 40,000 students.

AfriAlliance MOOC on Social Innovation in Water and Climate Change in Africa
2020-06-02 - 2020-07-12
AfriAlliance is delighted to announce that it’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on “Social innovation in water and climate change in Africa” will be held from 2 June to 12 July 2020!
Register and Learn More Here

Webinar Series on Farmer-Led Irrigation Development (FLI)
2020-06-11 - 2020-07-09
Please join us for an exciting, new webinar series on farmer-led irrigation development (FLI)! The first session will be held on June 11, 2020 at 13:00-14:00 UTC.
About
Farmer-led irrigation development (FLI) has gained increased attention by government institutions, development and implementation partners as one of the potential solutions to build climate resilience for smallholder farmers and transform food systems to support healthy diets for all. Furthermore, the knock-on effects of health-related disasters such as the Covid-19 pandemic on market disruptions impacting food and nutrition security, enforces the urgency to increase multiple purpose water access and increase local community resilience.
The question arises on how we can accelerate sustainable scaling of FLI given the challenges of underdeveloped irrigation supply chains, high upfront costs and lack finance/business models, lack or underdeveloped markets and agricultural value chains (especially for high value crops), gender and social inclusion gaps in access to and benefits from FLI, and limited water resource governance.
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) together with the World Bank, The Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) are hosting a virtual mini-series to discuss key issues and identify a way forward for operationalizing sustainable and inclusive scaling of farmer-led irrigation development. The webinar series is geared towards practitioners, policy makers, private sector and researchers interested in further advancing FLI globally and overcoming the often observed systemic barriers in reaching scale.
SPEAKERS
Regassa Namara, The World Bank Group
Claudia Sadoff, International Water Management Institute
Thai Thi Minh, International Water Management Institute
Nicholas Brozovic, Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute
Nicole Lefore, Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation, Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture Development
Samir Ibrahim, Sunculture
Phil Woodhouse, University of Manchester, SAFI-network
For more information and to register click here
