Online course - Disasters and ecosystems: Resilience in a changing climate

About this course

Disaster has multifold impact e.g., losses of lives, devastating impact on infrastructure, damage ecosystem and undermine the development. On the top of this, Climate change is expected to aggravate existing disaster risks in many regions of the world. There is a need for increased awareness amongst practitioners, policymakers and researchers on the latest advances in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). The idea of this MOOC is to deepen the knowledge on ecosystem management, resilience and transformation, climate change adaptation to bring into practice for disaster risk reduction and for sustainable development.

Expert track

This track is for professionals and students who seek more in-depth learning and skill development in applying ecosystem-based tools for disaster risk reduction and adaptation. The Expert Track consists of 15 units with video- presentations and accompanying self-study booklets, quizzes and a peer reviewed final assessment. The Expert Track runs over four weeks, with four hours per week.

What you will learn

After completion of the course, the participant will be able to:

• Linking disaster, climate change and ecosystems and how Eco-DRR can be practiced.
• Eecosystems and spatial tools for risk reduction and risk assessment.
• Learning different tools for managing Eco-DRR e.g., community based tools, ecological engineering, economic valuation as well as water management tools.
• The concept of resilience and it‘s transforming process in the view of Eco-DRR perspective and some real life example of Eco-DRR around the globe.

Course outline

Expert track - Launch date: 15th January 2018

• Unit 7: Linking ecosystems and humans to disasters
• Unit 8: Principles of systems thinking and using natural systems for disaster risk reduction
• Unit 9: Putting Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) into practice
• Unit 10: Linkages between Eco-DRR and EbA
• Unit 11: Putting Ecosystem-based adaptation into practice
• Unit 12: Incorporating ecosystems in risk assessments
• Unit 13: Ecosystems and spatial tools for risk reduction
• Unit 14: Principles of spatial planning and community-based tools for Eco-DRR
• Unit 15: Sustainable land and water management tools for Eco-DRR
• Unit 16: Ecological engineering for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
• Unit 17: Economic tools for Eco-DRR
• Unit 18: Principles of mainstreaming ecosystem based disaster risk reduction into national policies, strategies, plans and projects
• Unit 19: Approaches for operationalizing resilience
• Unit 20: Problem solving assignment – peer review of assignments