Resource Efficiency

The One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn) is a joint initiative of more than 30 multilateral organizations helping countries to achieve climate change action both through general climate literacy and applied skills development. UN CC:Learn provides strategic advice and quality learning resources to help people, governments and businesses to understand, adapt, and build resilience to climate change. UN CC:Learn is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The objective of the courses is to bridge the knowledge gap in production, marketing, financial, institutional and policy-related risks at the farm level, as well as across the agricultural value chain, with a holistic approach in the developing country context. They are targeted to national policy makers, farmer organizations and operators in the agro-food value chains, to transfer skills and competencies to mitigate Agricultural risks, using concrete tools and strategies.

Amongst the most notable skill deficiencies was proficiency in project and programme cycle management (PPCM). PPCM provides an overall analytical and decision-making framework for results-based management. Proficient use of PPCM techniques is essential when it comes to ensuring that programmes and projects are relevant, feasible and effective in promoting development.

It cuts across all economic sectors and constitutes 15–30 per cent of the gross domestic product in most countries, hence its significance for enhancing market competitiveness and sustainable development. Setting up effective national public procurement systems has often been a challenge, not least because of a deficit in competent human resources and the need to keep up to date with the ever-increasing complexity of the legal framework, the globalization of markets, and sophisticated contractual and tendering systems.

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. 

This course looks at where important materials in products we use every day come from and how these materials can be used more efficiently, longer, and in closed loops. This is the aim of the Circular Economy, but it doesn’t happen on its own. It is the result of choices and strategies by suppliers, designers, businesses, policymakers and all of us as consumers.

Our global society is not sustainable. We all know about the challenges we’re facing: waste, climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity. At the same time, we want to sustain our economies and offer opportunities for a growing world population. This course is about providing solutions we really believe in: a Circular Economy.

In this course we explore the Circular Economy: how businesses can create value by reusing and recycling products, how designers can come up with amazingly clever solutions, and how you can contribute to make the Circular Economy happen.