The new version of our MOOC on Environmental Security and Sustaining Peace will be launched on 11 February on the SDG Academy Platform.

Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9synaiAb7Q&feature=youtu.be

Here is the enrollment link: https://www.edx.org/course/environmental-security-and-sustaining-peace-0

This free 8 week course is offered in English, with video transcripts and tests in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese.

Conflicts over natural resources and the environment are among the greatest challenges in 21st-century geopolitics. These conflicts present serious threats to human security at both the national and local levels. Natural resources and the environment can nonetheless serve as a vehicle for peace if managed in a sustainable and equitable manner. 

Environmental peacebuilding has emerged as a new frontier in interdisciplinary studies. It offers a conceptual and operational framework to understand the positive peacebuilding potential of natural resources across the conflict lifecycle while mitigating potential risks.

This 8-week course on Environmental Security and Sustaining Peace provides an in-depth introduction to the multiple roles that natural resources and the environment play in the onset, escalation, and resolution of, and recovery from, violent conflicts. Many of the considerations and approaches in this course are also relevant to understanding and addressing social conflicts around natural resources and the environment. 

The development of this course was a major undertaking over an entire year in a genuine partnership among the SGD Academy, UNEP, UNDP, the Environmental Law Institute, and the Universities of Columbia, Duke and California (Irvine). It also reflects the combined learning from a range of other UN agencies, governments, civil society and non-governmental organizations, academics, and private sector actors. It was funded by the government of Finland together with the EC and the United Nations Development Account. There is a signficiant amount of content on land conflicts that would be of interest to your GLTN network.