NOVEMBER 2020 NEWSLETTER
“Every single person on this Earth has the power to change the world.”
– Emma Thompson, Activist and Actress
Join the Race to Zero
In advance of the COP 26, networks and institutions working in Further and Higher Education are coming together to commit to going net zero as part of the Race to Zero.
Join the Race to Zero by signing the Global Climate Letter!
The aim is to get as many networks and institutions as possible on board in order to showcase the commitments towards the attainment of SDG 4 (Education) and 13 (Climate Change).
Watch this message from Nigel Topping, UK High Level Climate Champion for COP26 and Gonzalo Munoz, Chilean High Level Climate Champion for COP25 on why you need to take action now.
Who can sign: Ideally, the president or chancellor of respective institutions will sign on to this letter on behalf of the institution. However, if an institution has already committed to the actions outlined below via previous agreements, any faculty or staff member of the institution can sign on to reiterate its pre-existing commitment.
If you have any questions regarding who can sign on to this letter, please contact us. Networks that represent higher and further education institutions can also sign the letter.
Final call to join Nudging Pilot Phase
Nominate your campus to be part of the Little Book of Green Nudges pilot phase. This means that you will select at least one green nudge from The Little Book of Green Nudges and implement it on your campus. You will then let us know how it went, what the challenges were and basically give us any feedback that you might have. This will help other universities navigate the nudge implementation process. So far, 252 campuses from 43 countries have already signed up.
Sign up to be a pilot campus here.
Note that due to overwhelming interest in the pilot phase the deadline has been extended until the end of December 2020 and the pilot phase is set to commence in early 2021.
What is the Little Book of Green Nudges?
The Little Book of Green Nudges is a quick guide to reducing your campus’ environmental footprint through behavioural change. The concise and user-friendly publication summarizes the evidence around what nudges work best while seeking to encourage more sustainable practices among students and staff across several behavioural areas. It also provides simple guidance on how to implement and evaluate behavioural interventions in a variety of contexts. Watch the launch video and see the full publication here.
For more information on the booklet and the pilot phase, check out the website here.
GEO-6 Technical Summary Webinar: How to incorporate into University modules
GEO-6 Technical Summary Webinar:
How to incorporate GEO into university modules
Date: TBD
Contact Caroline at caroline.kaimuru@un.org for more info.
The sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), UNEP’s flagship integrated environmental assessment, launched in 2019, stresses that the scale of the environmental challenges we face requires true transformational change in how we produce and consume energy and food as well as how we manage waste, rather than simply incremental policies and business as usual. The Technical Summary of GEO-6 distils the science and data in the main report and synthesizes the information to make it more accessible to students and scientists, making it more useful both for teaching and learning at the university level. Check out the Technical Summary Report!
The Technical Summary will be presented in a webinar that will focus on how to use GEO-6 and the Technical Summary as a teaching tool at the university level. Panelists will include university professors who have participated in the GEO process and used GEO as a teaching tool, to discuss their experience and provide advice and lessons learned for university students and lecturers.
The Keeling Curve Prize
The goal of the prize is to bend the Keeling Curve by locating and funding the best climate solutions the world has to offer.
What is the Keeling Curve? The Keeling Curve is a graph that represents the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere since 1958. It is names after its creator, Dr. Charles David Keeling.
Since the recordings began, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has steadily increased, representing anthropogenic climate change. It’s our goal to bend the curve back down.
To that end, the Global Warming Mitigation Project is looking for projects with a proven track record of taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. They’ve developed five categories, each one addressing a specific sector of climate innovation.
Apply now for the 2021 Keeling Curve Prize. Applications are being accepted across innovative climate change solutions in the areas of Capture & Utilization, Energy, Finance, Social & Cultural Pathways, and Transport & Mobility. Each year the Keeling Curve Prize gives out 10 awards of $25,000 USD each.
Deadline: February 10th, 2021
For more information, check out the website.
Green Entrepreneurship Online Course
In the decades of working with local and indigenous communities around the world, UNDP’s Global Programme on Nature for Development has observed many incredible eco-friendly businesses launched by its entrepreneurial constituencies. In an effort to spread the word about these initiatives among a large global audience and support other local community representatives in jumpstarting their green businesses, UNDP’s e-learning programme Learning for Nature, managed by UNDP’s Global Programme on Nature for Development, decided to offer a free and open online course coordinated by Lehigh alumna Viktoriia Brezheniuk ’15G, who is now an e-learning and capacity building analyst with Learning for Nature.
Learn more here.
This course is a result of a partnership between Lehigh University, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Convention on Biological Diversity, EcoEnterprises Fund, FaithInvest, Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, Regional Activity Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production, SEED, and The GEF Small Grants Programme. Between November 2 and December 11, 2020, this course will equip participants around the world—amateurs and experts alike—with the skills to develop their own sustainable green businesses.
Sign up for the course here.
MOCK COP 2020
From November 19th – December 1st the void of the postponed COP26 was filled with a big, inclusive online Mock COP. The event was run by young climate activists and included empowering and informative keynotes and panels by global names and youth activists. The discussions were framed around five conference themes: climate justice; education; health and mental health; green jobs; carbon reduction targets. The event culminated in a powerful conference statement to world leaders from the youth of the world, raising ambition for COP26. The idea is to now support and mentor delegates to engage their domestic politicians in the year leading up to COP26.
Learn more here: https://www.mockcop.org
Reset Earth Campaign Launching Soon
Stay tuned for the Ozone Secretariat’s soon-to-be-released Reset Earth campaign. Set in 2084, our unlikely heroes travel through time as they battle to save the plant and restore the ozone layer. If you are interested in joining the soft launch on Dec 10th, 2020, please reach out to Stephanie at stephanie.haysmith@un.org.
Get In Touch With Us
We would love to hear from you – What would you like to hear more about in these newsletters? Let us know and we’ll do our best to share content to your liking. And if you have any interesting calls to action, research asks or helpful information to share with others around the environment / sustainability / higher education theme, please don’t hesitate to send them to carina.mutschele@un.org and we will select a few to include in our next newsletter.
A few reminders…
MOOC on Nature-based Solutions for Disaster and Climate Resilience
Nature offers many solutions to reduce the impacts of disasters and climate change, such as protecting forests on steep slopes, maintaining sand dunes along coastline and wetlands to buffer excess rainwater.
In this free-of-charge massive open online course (MOOC), find out how people around the world are building resilience to disasters and climate change impacts through nature-based solutions.
This course will help you understand how to apply these nature-based solutions that restore or protect natural or modified ecosystems and biodiversity and allow for their sustainable management.
This course is open to everyone, whether you have an environmental background or not and you can choose from any of your preferred languages including English, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and Bahasa.
Watch the promotional video and check out the website: www.pedrr.org/MOOC
New Clean Energy Film and Curriculum about Groundbreaking Solar Flight around the World
The award-winning documentary, Point of No Return – the gripping story of the first solar powered flight around the world – is a dynamic jumping-off point for a new environmental education program for students to collaborate, build, and innovate towards sustainable solutions. The film itself and related STEM lessons and hands-on activities explore clean energy, sustainability, and global climate solutions, and is now available for K-12 classrooms and distance-learning. Also available for university screenings. Learn more: www.pointofnoreturndoc.com/education
SDGS for the SDGs:
International Youth Conference
The 2nd Global Virtual Conference for Students Doing Goal Oriented Sciences (SDGS) on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will take place on Wednesday, December 9th, 2020 at 12:00pm MDT. The student-focused conference is an opportunity for students to present their research and action on the sustainable development goals as posters, story maps or in the form of a press conference. The conference is focused on students in academic institutions at the graduate or undergraduate level. Registration is free and poster submissions are highly encouraged. Register here!
Stay Safe Everyone!
Best,
The Youth, Education and Advocacy Team