Trigger Change! Innovating higher education through free courses for land restoration - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Yeah.
I think that's the time as an interpreter.
The.
We can't members.
Hello.
Hello, here.
We love them.
Excited event.
One of the condition is that they should invite me to say something.
So that's why you're seeing me again and again.
I was not planning to be on this session, but my friend, doctor Karen Mayer asked me to join and say a few opening words and I cannot refuse, Karen, because our professional relationship goes a very long way back.
And we have been working on the domain of capacity building for more than 15 years now.
We have a very interesting type of relationship because I generally don't do much.
I just generate ideas.
I said, Karen, wouldn't it be very interesting if we did this and then Karen has to spend days and nights to make it happen.
So when I joined the UN Convention to combat decertification and the G 20 Global and Initiative, The mandate given to us was to achieve 50% reduction in degred land by 2040.
That's about 1 billion hectares of land.
That will translate to about 1.5 trillion to be spent achieving that.
We looked at the human resource pool currently existing to deal with that challenge.
We looked at the world's largest database of restoration professionals and that was less than 10,000 people.
Now, you cannot restore 1 billion hectas with 10,000 people mainly concentrated in few countries.
We wanted to increase the numbers, many fold, 100 fold.
We wanted 1 million professionals on land restoration.
I thought, Karen, wouldn't it be very interesting if we had 1 million professionals on land restoration.
And how will we go there? We will look at where those professionals who are dealing with land, agricultural professionals, forestry professionals, mining professionals, urban professionals.
We also wanted to work with business professionals.
This is a dream which we started with and then very ably translated by Karen into action.
Karen probably will present some of the statistics, but I'm very I But I will have to leave a bit early, so I apologize in advance.
Thank you, Carolyn.
Well, thank you, My always for your inspiring ideas and for your vision and for your targets, which I appreciate a little bit less, trying to achieve 1 million, but it certainly gives us the vision and the ambition to try hard and we have.
We've launched together with partners.
It's very important to note that I did not do this alone and I would like to invite some of those partners to speak in a few minutes.
We developed two courses.
One on innovative sustainable agriculture Solutions for and Restoration.
Some of the statistics are there.
In the last two years since we developed this course, we had over 1,300 downloads and approximately 600 universities and training institutions that are already teaching this course.
The second course was launched one year ago.
And it's more on urban land restoration, sustainable urban land restoration, and we have around 300 downloads and around 180 universities that are teaching that.
We have translated both courses into Spanish.
The agriculture course is also in Arabic, and we're working on Russian and French as well.
Now these are open source materials, something that UNSCO has been speaking a lot about, but not many actors, not many universities provide free educational materials.
In a world where I think our borders are closing more and more, this is an extremely important initiative where we're opening up high quality academic level materials openly.
These are university kits that can be downloaded.
You can download all of the I don't know, 400 PowerPoints, of course, 130 page course manual, ten case studies for each course, high world class documentary videos, and you can use them in your classroom.
It can also be used for high school students and training institutions.
We believe that providing free materials is something that the United Nations should be in the business of doing and joining hands in investing in our most important resource, which is our youth and making sure that they also become more competent and green skills.
As doctor Mery mentioned, green skills is something that we're highly lacking in a world where there's more and more interest in land restoration.
Actually, what we're going to do is I want to hear from you all now.
We're going to go to our short survey.
I'll let you go then.
Thank you, Mery for coming.
Now you all get to work a little bit.
We want to hear from you.
The first question should be pretty easy unless you have many different countries, of course, but just tell us what country you're from.
You can either go to.com, Or you can also use the QR code and just tell us what country you're from, and then we'll hear from some of the other speakers.
We have a lot of people from Germany here and a lot of people from Mongolia that I'm not too surprised about.
Also, if you've just come in, we have interpretation services.
You can get the headset.
And get today's session interpreted.
Mongolia, Germany, but we also have Iran, Scotland, US, Switzerland, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa, Georgia, UAE, Romania, fantastic.
We have a very diverse group.
Let's go to the next question, please.
Now, this one might be a little bit trickier.
What is your role in land restoration? You could be a student, you could be a farmer, you can be an educator, a teacher, Do you have any link with land restoration? Maybe you're just learning, maybe you're just curious.
Tell us what your role is.
We have lots of students, youth activists, great.
Knowledge management, Cashmere factory manager.
That's fantastic.
Khan.
Who mentioned Khan? I don't know what that means.
Khan.
Can somebody explain? Do we have any Mongolian speaking people here? Can you explain what is meant by con? Anybody feel courageous? Tell me.
What is it? King.
We have a king here.
Who's the king? Okay.
Well, I'm very honored by having the presence of a king here.
Knowledge management, youth activist, Park Ranger, teachers, assistant, researchers.
Fantastic.
We have a very broad, diverse audience.
Next question.
To what extent is land restoration taught in your country? To a great extent, somewhat, not at all, to a little extent.
Be honest.
All right.
To what extent is we have a bit of a tie here.
Let's see.
To a little extent, somewhat not at all.
We have mainly to a little extent, not at all and somewhat.
To a great extent.
Who said to a great extent? Where are you from? Brazil.
Let's give a round of applause to Brazil.
Everybody else seems to be in the other categories.
So thank you for being here from Brazil.
Maybe I should invite you up to the stage, actually.
I guess I can take Myle's seat now that he's left.
Okay, next question.
Now, trickier, we're getting harder and harder.
What are the main challenges in mainstreaming education in land for land restoration country? You're not allowed to say funding.
Because everybody would say funding.
Nobody's allowed to say funding because that's probably the main challenges, we have funding.
No, something else because we know that funding is anything else? What else? Lack of awareness, lack of priority, government disinterest, is not taken seriously.
Okay.
Emotional disinterest.
Isn't that interesting? Not included in curricula.
Priority.
That's why we're here, is to increase awareness and to engage you a little bit more emotionally, I guess, also, and to make it so that it is taken more seriously.
Last question.
How can we overcome these challenges.
Now that you've identified some problems, give me some solutions besides funding.
Yeah.
Besides funding, because we know that's the main one.
But if we had a magic wand, what would you do with your magic wand? Spread awareness, raise.
Working with schools, advocate and engage.
That's what we're doing.
Positive experiences, where we're going to hear from some people on positive experiences.
Unity.
I like that a lot.
Spread awareness, engaging youth, committed online campaign.
That sounds great.
I think we need more communicators.
Um, All right, so that's exactly what we're doing.
We're creating unity, we're spreading awareness, and we're overcoming some of those barriers because we know that land is a major connector between biodiversity loss and climate change impacts, right? So land is really the basis for all of this.
Okay, let's give a round of applause to everybody for your participation.
Thank you.
Okay, so next in our program, we're going to hear from a couple of, I would say, young land restorers or environmental advocates.
Let's hear first from Susila.
She's going to have a couple of minutes to talk a little bit more about some of her experience as a model United Nations delegate, but also perhaps any gaps in learning about land restoration.
7 minutes over to you, Susa.
Thank you.
Thank you.
First of all, I'm very grateful to be here.
Thanks for giving young people to have the opportunity to speak in conferences like this.
I believe it's a very important matter.
Um, so you've probably just saw my name.
It's a very long name.
In Spain, we have two last names, which makes it I go by Silla, which is my name or S if you prefer.
In my case, I'm studying environmental technologies engineering at UPM, that's the Polytechnical University of Madrid, specializing in energy generation industrial activity.
Very technical background.
I said, I'm from Spain.
Apart from the technical part, it's also important to explain what am I doing here? I'm also volunteering in association where I help less privileged, let's say, kids to get opportunity in high quality education.
I'm starting this year a program for them to show them and get the ability on mentoring and critical thinking and public speaking, which is very important.
I Oh, sorry, Soaking about the MUN what am I doing here? I have a bit of MUN experience, which MUN stands for motto of the United Nations.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I did my first one was at UPM that's my university.
Then I was one week ago at Vienna, the UN headquarters, having a debate there, which was very, very interesting.
Yeah, speaking about educational gap of UNTD and land deforestation, it's very interesting because even though I come from an environmental background, we do not have that much of talking and given the important about this topic, even in our degree, which is very, very important.
And also, it's not only about environmental background, it's also about if we want to kind of help the solutions and get better, we need to know them first after happening.
Yeah, I think that also the trigger change, the courses are great.
It is great to have this opportunity to learn more and it is also a very advantage to think that it's free and it's online so everybody can access this education, not only not only teachers or professors, but also students that care about sustainability and land restoration.
In my case, because next year I'm chairing the UP MUN, we are actually having committee on UN CCD, So it is a great way to assess UN CDD importance with MUN, with youth people, and with students and actually getting them to know.
And also a very important thing is having the studies in the education band.
So thanks to these courses, we are going to encourage our delegates to have a look and to inform themselves before speaking and especially UNCCD delegation.
Of course, as Church, we very, very like to engage also in the courses.
Um, how are we doing in time? Good.
To finish, I think it is going a bit faster than I thought it would.
I had a thing that I think it's very important, why is it important to give space to young people? When I was coming here first, my family were very excited to actually having a panel that they were like, you have to do especially good, you cannot have enemies that, you have to be an expertise.
I thought, if they need an expertise in land restoration, I have no point coming here.
That's not my point here.
My point here, what I believe I have to do here is to address the youth problems and land restoration and how can we help other youth with the course and with youth voices which are very, very important.
Not only in the future because we always speak about future, but we are already stakeholders and to make future, you have to act now.
Yeah, that's what I stand for and what I believe it is very, very important.
Thank you so much.
Let's give a round of applause to Cecilia for Very clearly articulating, I think some of the viewpoints of youth and the importance and the importance of such courses and the gaps that are out there.
Thank you very much.
You want to hand over the microphone to Fiona? So Fiona, do you mind talking a little bit about you're a forest management graduate? You're representing the International Forestry Students Association.
Our course has a whole lot of information on agroforestry, which might be something that you've studied, but also our course includes a lot on business models for young people and how they can market their products, for example, or help farmers market their products, which is also, I would say something that a student in forestry might be interested in.
Over to you, Fiona, for any remarks from your perspective.
To you, please.
I will not talk about myself, but I will also talk about what is IFSA doing and then what land restoration that we do or any survey relate that.
First of all, I would like to say thank you so much for inviting us to be the speaker here and my name is Viana.
I'm deeply honored to speak today as International First Student Association delegates.
As you might notice under global commitment like the UN ticket on ecosystem restoration, momentum like this always improve and yet that reminds the first sizing disconnect.
Why I can say like that because land restoration is vital climate resilience, but it's still not sufficient integrated into many natural resource program.
Through my forestry education, because I'm a graduate from the forest management, I entered university passionate about the restoring and also degrading ecosystem.
So we learn a strong foundation, especially for the landscape itself, but we are not sufficient integrated into the curriculum.
So restoration was often introduced only the third year, like in the detail in the third year that we become the part of students, but it's more like with another lesson.
So it's only half of it or not in detail.
But then I feel like this is something that a gap between the traditional restoration approach.
What I experience, however, is not simply about the individual experience, but to understand, we also have a collaboration with our partner in ISA to know more about what's the gap between forest student and all.
So in Africa, Landscape Alliance, within and university and research, AUFRO the Global Landscape Forum launch a restoration education initiative, and they have a collaboration with five university like in Nigeria, Malawi, Rwanda, and also similar in Asia, we have a collaboration with Cipher Aircraft and also the original model Forest Network Asia University Network, AUFroO AUC and India For Project plus IMFN and FSA confined the Booker workshop in AA 2025 to see how develop regional restoration curriculum.
However, to truly evaluate Of course, we want to evaluate with the initiative.
We map the training needs assessment or we call it TNA for the survey.
How is ESN with the initiative itself? Our T&L methodology combined three core approach, the quantitative online survey targeting for a student, focus group discussion, and also in deep interview.
And with that, what did the quantitative survey data actually refers about priority skill gaps? I was using my iPad because it will be a lot of data, so I want to be followed.
In Africa, the assessment for the T&L itself, it said the largest competency gap is grain proposal writing carried as CAP 1.21, followed by financial budgeting.
I think someone also mentioned before the financial budgeting issues, and also 30% of African students report a total lack of field funding.
And how about ASA? In ASA, the survey expose 76% of Asia students, they mainly focus, they don't have any capacity and also understand about the GIS and ASO degradation mapping.
73% also reported critical gaps about the strategic project planning and international policy framework.
And 67% feel unprepared to integrate the climate adaption and also the ecological knowledge.
This finding point clear that for learning opportunities, we need something complement formal university education.
That's why the trigger change come in.
Courses that are sort, practical, interdisciplinary, and also directly connected to real world challenge.
This is the trigger change course are particularly relevant.
With that, to address this for conclusion, students across Africa and also Asia are asking for concrete applied solution rather than traditional lecture.
First, the structural timing of integration gap.
Because across border region restoration is introduced to the academic learning.
Survey data show that 67% of African students and 72% of Asean students come from the land restoration is only introduced in the third or fourth year when they become the students.
Of course, it's a minor submodels, not a big lesson is.
And the second, the operational and also governance skill for it and like what I've mentioned before, about the financial budgeting and also the strategy project planning.
The third one is the Ifitible reliance on non formal education because 82% of Africa students and 79% of Asean students state they are forced to seek external so courses, which means we have a exact course that they can have, they can know more, so that will be much better.
Fourth, the demand for apply model learning because students across the both continents in said 85% of respondent in Africa and 87% in Asia split the main sort, such as two until four week model course, which I do believe the trigger changes can do that.
To address this for conclusion, Um, first we can do is short intensive two and four week model course.
Second is the interactive digital GIS, and the third one is the 360 degrees virtual filtp.
Maybe the trigger change also can add with that, the virtual trip to analyze within the gap of the funding or the access limited for each place.
F one is the direct mentorship.
I think this one is already got it for the trigger change for the 73% of African students and 70% of Asean students, they mentioned the direct mentorship for the active folk to bridge the gap between the classroom and also the project negotiation.
So everyone, this finding from Africa and also Asia demonstrate why flexible and also accessible learning opportunities are not simply complimentary.
They are becoming essential initiatives, such as trigger change course can help bridge the gap between formal academic education and the practical competency students that we can need to contribute to restoration in different sector.
So IFSA fully support the G 20 initiative for the free open course and in restoration, but we urge to not design them in a Ephory tower, but build them around this realty and AGP the finance, the GIS, the government policy, and also the proposal writing and make them flexible enough to respond to different landscape contexts because of course, we have very different geography and all.
So democratizing restoration education is most strategic investment for our planet, we do believe on it.
So together, let's trigger the change our world so urgently needs.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Fiona, for very clearly articulating not only the strengths of our course, but also putting forward some demands, which that is what student or association should do.
We do not have 360 virtual tours.
That's a really good idea though.
But we do have case studies from around the world, from different landscapes.
We do talk about how to find funding in the course and how to do with startups, actually.
This is a course that has been co created, so let me get back to my slides and show some of our partners.
Let's see here.
Let's go with the course trailer now since it's up on the screen, let's see if that works.
Then I'm going to hand over to some of our partners.
This is for the agriculture course.
The social an opportunity to cons.
He knows.
This Court while creating innovation a copy to court most effectively connect.
All right.
Thanks to Georgina for the voice over on that trailer, by the way.
Let's recognize her voice there.
Again, this course was definitely created together with partners.
Let's go to the next slide.
Yes, many of them.
It takes a whole village and it takes a whole world to co design a great course.
We did have your university, Fiona, was part of this development of this course, by the way, together with two representatives that we have here today.
Landscape Alliance, C four and ERF in action, who's now going to give a few words and then also from Tatenda from Wilkt.
Do we have any questions, by the way, for Fiona or Seca before we go forward? Otherwise, we'll have another Q&A.
Some of her friends know from MUN.
I heard you were preparing really challenging questions for your friend.
This would be a good time for them.
Otherwise, we'll come back.
Think about that.
Let's go ahead.
Let's see.
I think we are going to have first from Tatend.
Let me hand over to you.
I think what we want to do is go to a bit of the overview of our course on sustainable agriculture and innovative sustainable agriculture solutions.
As you can see, we have five modules and your university basically contributed to a majority of the entire course.
Let me hand over to you, Tenda for a few comments on that.
Can I have the microphone, Fiona? Do you have that still? Yeah.
To hand over to you to talk a little bit about your contributions to the course.
Thank you very much.
I know that karaoke is very famous here, so it's a little bit PowerPoint karaoke for me as well, but I'm not assuming too many additional flight lights are coming.
Now, I'm very happy to be here.
Thanks a lot for an invitation.
We have been developed this course, as you mentioned, with many partners, and I think that's a really nice thing of this course to bring so many experiences at all the different levels together.
With all the universities providing this content on the course, universities that are competent on these specific topics and with very interactive examples, meaning not only at the very theoretical level, but really with exercises for the students, for the participants that you can dive into it into the topics.
Then always to have this, what you mentioned, the case studies with examples from the ground.
You mentioned we shouldn't do it in Ivory tower, we should really include examples from the ground to understand what it means in reality.
This combination of materials that is accessible in a modular way really makes it very attractive for all different not all different, but many different universities and different levels to really get specific information because you don't have to download all 180 hours or whatever or litex, you really can dive into the modules or the information you are interested in.
What you mentioned at the beginning, this modular approach really helps to dive in where you are, potentially very well concepts and everything and you don't have to go in Module one.
But if you're interested as an example in more on agricultural approaches and sustainable land management and examples there, you can start with Module two.
There it's not only about the concept and the It's really bringing also the Wat database.
Since I'm also from Workat I quickly can introduce it.
There is a database that can be approached by everyone, and it's also open access and you get some good examples from all over the world, more than 2000 good practices really again with case that is from the ground with those who have done it.
Because I think we all know we like to learn from someone who has experience who did it before, who knows what it means and who knows how to make failures and how to learn from it.
And so This also helps students to directly find a source where they can find in future as well good practices if they are looking for something, and also linking to the tools and technologies that are used.
You mentioned the drones or decision support systems.
It's not just any tools, it's really also the linkage to the UN CCD or different convention is here because right now at the moment, they are discussing in the plenary in the Crick and the CSD actually are discussing the decision support systems which can be used by the countries Report on land degradation, which is a very difficult topic and So they have these discussions, which tools are we going to use? How are we using them? How do we make these trainings and these tools or part of those tools are already in this course as well, available actually in an understandable manner so that everybody can use it and understand what it means.
Mention not only about land degradation and the UN CCD, really also bringing in the biodiversity angle or the climate change angle to bring these different elements together and not to work in silos.
Of course, you mentioned before, it's going beyond that.
It's really going into the business plan making and to market your ideas, gives you the idea how to get some funds, and this is the Module five that also brings it in.
The open access, I think that's also quite unique because this course can be access and download.
We have seen impressive numbers like already 600 universities and we're also working with partner universities myself in my courses.
I included some of these elements in my course.
Perhaps not everything because I don't have a course of 180 hours.
But then those elements that I can use, I can include and the The case studies that are there can be replaced with your own case studies and with your own experiences.
It's flexibility, I think that really makes it user friendly and can be used by someone who is not so much experienced on the topic before.
I'm quite sure that everyone who is going into these different models afterwards, they look at the landscape in a different way.
They do understand what are the problems and what are possible solutions.
I think that is really the beauty of this course.
I think you don't want to take me too much time.
It's okay.
Yeah.
We have two.
That's fine.
I could go on a little bit.
It also shows in the second module about sustainable land management.
It's not only about how you can find good practices, it also shows the students how they can contribute to it.
Because the WCT database is a standardized platform where everybody can document good practices, and then these good practices are not only available within the platform, it is being linked with different platforms, applications, and program.
Databases at the national level, but also at the global or regional level.
Since WCT is the UN CCD primary recommended database, the good practices that might be documented by you or your very local CSO or NGO appears after review process potentially as a best practice of a country and can be selected by the focal point or by the representative of your party of your delegation as the best practice in the reporting of the UNCCD, meaning you can contribute with your very local experience to the national or even to the global level.
With a round of applause for Ttendas.
So not only are you learning about one of the best courses out there in the world on sustainable agriculture, but you're also learning about one of the best databases, Wolkat where you can actually download good practices in sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, dryland management, pasture management.
And so there's an explanation about how to use this database also in our course.
With that, I'd like to hand over also next to our next speaker.
Thank you again, Tina.
And our next speaker is going to be our colleague Tune De Brun, who is a global learning strategist.
I'll thank you for that, handing over the microphone with a Landscape Alliance, formerly known as long acronym C four ECRf and now a little bit of Snapper title, Landscape Alliance.
So tell us a little bit about the role that you played and also give you some space to talk about some other open access resources that you're developing that I think our audience would be interested in.
So over to you, Tim.
Thank you very much, Karen, and thanks also for the nice introduction about Landscape Alliance.
Landscape Alliance is indeed a rebranding of two organizations that merged a couple of years ago that are part of the CGIR.
One was focusing on agro forestry.
The other one was focusing on forestry.
With Landscape Alliance, we are very proud and we are very honored to be here today.
But before I go there, I think just If we reflect a bit on the setting where we are and who is here, I think this is quite a unique occasion.
The fact that we have students from around the world, that we have professionals, that we have decision makers, that we have investors, that we all come together around the issue of restoration, sustainable land management, I think there are few and far opportunities, very few opportunities that allow for that.
The fact that we put in that conversation, education at the center, I think is such a great move that you did and so important because education is actually the power of education, in my view is creating these foundational capacities.
It's bringing in foundational knowledge so that we don't have to teach them to the professionals that are here so that the future, that you will go into your work.
Maybe one day you will be here and I will be riding ponies in Mongolia, but that you bring all the things already there.
So that's, I think, why Landscape Alliance and why with our team on CDE, capacity development and education, why we were honored and enthusiastic to join these initiatives because indeed, we believe that education and in this case, tertiary education, but in other cases, and you will talk about it more tomorrow, primary and secondary education or even early childhood education will build these foundational competencies that we will need.
Because indeed students, you will be the ones taking forward this agenda when we are riding ponies.
We worked on the last module and the last module Maybe the rain gods have given me some.
Yes.
The last module, we perceived it as the module that brings it together where we look at sustainable land management as an innovation.
Innovation we can look at it with different lenses, different perspectives.
Innovation is not just an agricultural technology.
It also means that you have a social innovation.
Shall speak a little bit.
Can you still hear me? Is that still okay? Yeah.
Okay, good.
So it also means that it's an innovation in terms of how you bring people together, how you bring decision makers, farmers, students, consumers, NGOs, CSOs, how you bring them together around this endeavor of restoring land.
So it can be a social innovation, but it's also an economic or a financial innovation.
It's how do you entice or how do you attract investments in sustainable land management.
In this module, we look at innovations as spaces where we can move spaces where we can make a change, where we can do an investment.
And then to respond to you, Fa, give a tool to set up a business model canvas to develop a project.
So we give you the tools or we give your teachers the tools to teach you on how to do so so that Indeed, this is not an academic endeavor solely.
It's not purely for your foundational knowledge, but it's also giving you and equipping you with tools that you can use when you go forward.
Finally, I think the importance is that what I was saying is we are not solely in that module and in our relationship focusing on technical skills, we are a research organization, but we are also seeing research needs to lead to impact.
It's not just the technical capacities, but it's also the empowering and the enabling capacities that are really becoming much more important in our work.
I think when it comes to our role in the course, if we have time, if we have a little bit of time, I just want to show you our own learning management system, which is really relaunched just a couple of weeks ago where we host some of our courses, but also where we link to, for example, the trigger change course, just a minute video.
Yeah.
I hope it's working.
Otherwise, No.
It's all right.
That's not us, I think.
Just maybe very briefly then.
We have a learning management system which allows us to give you self based online courses where you can learn at your own time, in your own time and your own way on different topics, including and tomorrow I will present two courses on stakeholder engagement with evidence or on agroforestry specifically in the Great Green World, in the context of restoration in Africa.
But we also have facilitated online programs similar a little bit, not exactly the same, but where we blend a bit more our online resources with online facilitation, where we invite experts to deliver webinars and then create a community where these things can be discussed and debated and resources can be put.
We also create space for our partners, where we link to partner courses and partner initiatives.
I invite you tomorrow across the road here to the Great Green Wall Pavilion at 10:00 where I will also share more about our courses.
I think I'll leave it there, Gary.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much une.
I think I'm not sure that we mentioned that we're really also trying to change how we teach.
Although we have a lot of PowerPoints as part of our course, we're really encouraging professors to do as many student activities as possible.
We use the sandwich method, which is basically no longer than 20 minute lectures.
I know you've been listening to us for more than 20 minutes, so I'm going against my own principles.
But no longer than 20 minute lectures, then you switch to an activity and you try to empower students to be really leading the learning process.
A lot more than what we do in traditional top down teaching.
We really try to have more interactive teaching.
That's what this whole course is also about is pedagogics and more modern pedagogics with that.
With that, let's move on to the next course, which is on urban sustainable urban land restoration.
Now we have the video on urban.
Let's play that video, please, our course trailer.
In a world back organization, a new local initiative emerges to confront the challenges head on, introducing a university course for students eager to transform urban areas of Then you wonder, okay, I get sustainable urban land restoration, innovation, but urban areas really? I mean, how can you restore land in urban areas, especially urban cities that basically don't have a lot of land left.
But guess what? You can.
And what we're talking a lot about in this course is Any piece of urban land can be restored, at least to some extent, even in really busy, core areas, you can bring back some trees, you can have green rooftops, you can have green walls, anything to help bring down temperatures in some of our cities that are overheating.
Um We can also have pervious sidewalks.
There's many techniques that are being used now so that water doesn't become damaging to our cities but becomes more of a resource.
We're really looking at how to restore ecosystem services.
In other words, any kind of carbon reducing heat, C two absorption, water absorption, and that's really what this next course we want to talk about is about.
So Um, I want to recognize some of the partners.
Also there we had your university Piana.
We had UGM there as well.
See, they were a major developer and we've made sure to have universities from all four corners of the world literally co developing our courses.
So it's not Ivory Tower, exactly.
We've had also FAO present, and we've had many, I would say, more hands on stakeholders as well.
Um, but now I'd like to hand over to our colleague from the United Nations University as Institute for Environment and Human Security, Alejandra Ramos Calves.
They were the lead organization in developing the urban course, and you're also an architect and know something about urban areas.
Let me go to the next slide that explains a little bit more what this course is about, also five different modules.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the urban course and your role in it, please, Alejandra, over to you.
Sure, Karen.
Thank you.
Well, it was really, really on a personal level, a great experience to get to know so incredible people, Sandra, in the audience, she was also involved in the development of the course, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Ecuador, and Germany universities sharing their own knowledge and experience on urban land restoration.
Before diving into the the main content of these five modules, I would like to remember and reflect about all those conceptual discussions we held at the beginning of the course.
How to set up the course, what to include, what were we actually including? Because urban land restoration is often overlooked.
Although urbanization processes, it has been acknowledged.
As one of the main drivers of land degradation within cities like in the city limits, but also land degradation elsewhere, far away from cities because cities demand a lot of resources, and that also triggers land degradation elsewhere.
We were discussing about that and also about what is land restoration and what is land degradation? A coming back to one thing that Karen mentioned before about these capacities that are needed and that we don't only need green skills.
We put all these ideas together, and in the end, we figured out that what we needed to provide was teaching foundation, and that's why the course is thought as the same as the agricultural one in a modular way in which university professors can take a part that think it's useful or fits their own experiences, their own knowledge, their own solutions and techniques.
And so we focus very much on the framework and how to tell this story.
I believe Also thinking about these capacities, three were very, very important because we also wanted to share not only very technical capacities that of course are fundamental that are needed, but more capacities that are also sometimes overlooked.
In this sense, we were combining two overlooked things or dimensions, urban land restorations and these capacities that I can think of three most important for me.
One was critical thinking, the ability to reflect on our own assumptions and what are we restoring for what before we even plan it? The other one was systems thinking, this ability to understand systems, social ecological, social, environmental challenges.
And how these are interconnected.
This was very important and when we considered land restoration connected to biodiversity loss and climate change.
Then the other capacity was collaboration.
Currently, there's a lot of noise around co creation and collaboration, but we really embedded this also into the course and how we need to include, yes, a lot of our diverse stakeholders, but to create spaces where we can have genuine dialogue.
So this is said very easily, but it's not as easy as it may sound.
We included this into the course and what we're really transmitting is this lens, how to structure all this knowledge that already exists on land restoration, and in the case of the urban course, all the links that it has to the major environmental and social challenges that cities already face.
Also, well, I mentioned this before, like this synergy with the other conventions and the major crisis we have.
So these five modules will progressively include this content.
This frameworks, examples, some solutions, some techniques, and starting with this framing that I mentioned, some approaches, also how it is important to create an enabling environment for this restoration to happen, the importance of multilevel governance in cities and the continuation of policy.
Then we have operationalizing module that it's basically, tools that are already out there that already exist.
What we tried to do is create a catalog of what is out there and can relate to cities because also land restoration in cities can have very specific concerns, but also can provide a lot of benefits.
We have a catalog of tools.
And then the final module catalyzing innovations on sustainable land restoration is providing a template that was developed by FAO Green City colleagues.
What it does is using the business Canvas model for nature based solutions and trying to tweak it for sustainable urban land restoration, so that urban land restoration could also become an economic opportunity, a way to address food and water security.
I believe that's the structure of our course.
It's very interesting.
I really invite you to please check it out, to download it.
Also, we would like to receive feedback because I think this is going to be evolving work and it's worth including new techniques, new solutions because we also mentioned there that it doesn't make sense to duplicate efforts.
It's more that we get to know the efforts that already exist and that we manage to give the direction or follow the pathway that we want.
So yeah, basically, we've been trying to, I say, market or show this course to urban planners, but also urban geographers, those working in the urban space.
And they don't often teach innovation in setting up marketing plans.
And so we're really trying to be very transdisciplinary and getting students to think outside of the box.
Again, the idea is that an urban planning teacher may not want to teach all of the modules, but they can take a few slides or they can take sections of it.
So it's very flexible that way.
Um, I'd like to see now if there's any questions from the audience.
Do we have somebody who can come around with a microphone and you may have noticed that I've put QR codes in the bottom of each slide.
The idea is that you can actually download the course.
We might be having some issues with the website right now.
If you are not successful in downloading the course, my email is also on the website, you can write to me and I'll make sure you get the course.
Amanda, you tried and I had to email you the course.
Right now we seem to be having a little bit of technical issue with the website, but if you do sign up, we will write to you anyway and follow up to make sure you get the course.
If you had a question, please over to you.
Yes.
Oh, my God boys.
I I study interdisciplinary environmental sciences in Germany, so a little bit of these courses are about.
I really want to get them to my professors and to download them.
I do have a question because in Germany, you rarely have any interaction with indigenous people and the knowledge there or you don't want to engage in academic extractivism or anything of that kind.
I wanted to know if and how you included indigenous practices, voices, experiences in your courses from the limited knowledge I have is that they are a very central actor in the realm of restoration of land.
Very good question.
Let's see.
Alejanda, can you think of anything on indigenous knowledge that we include in the urban course? Well, maybe Ttenda can help out with that later on.
But Alejandra, go ahead first.
Thank you.
I think we have a case study, if I remember correctly, in New Zealand and we have ten case studies because these are more extent and throughout the course, we pinpoint examples but are not developed as proper case studies.
But these case studies do include this.
Now the thing when we also discussed about land restoration techniques, what we should call conventional traditional techniques and how not to.
So there is a tendency to romanticize this.
But this previous knowledge that was already there and now it's been taken on and being branched as this is new and this is a completely different strategy was already there and it turns out that now we're valuing it.
I would say this is a very good example.
I don't remember the specifics.
But yes, we consider to include this but carefully not to fall under this I would I would like to say superficial but this considerations because one of the things that we also highlight a lot in this course is the need to assess the context further, to be very aware of the context and also very respectful of the context and all the measures and all the solutions will always be dependent on the context.
The course is global and it has these big frameworks and recommendations and strategies that need to be brought down to the appropriate level.
Um, but I think I'm not sure if I responded to your question.
I very much would like to echo what you just said.
A in WC, we do not have this section only indigenous knowledge.
But of course, we are asking when it was implemented as an example.
Practices of WCA is more than 30-years-old than the practices that are already there forever, and then we have to newly implement the good practices.
I go in line with you what you said.
It's really very much depending on the context, how and when it is being implemented.
But I We also realized a lot of this indigenous knowledge that now is being documented is coming up.
It has somehow a revival, sometimes impression that if you can call it indigenous knowledge, it's much easier to find some fonts or whatever, but it's something that was actually even there for a long time and something that is very obvious.
There is no specific section on indigenous knowledge, but of course it is there because we have this more than 2000 good practices that are also introduced.
I would say we've been very keen to look about co design for both courses, including local communities, whether they be indigenous or not.
For the urban course, we do have a whole case study on specifically indigenous knowledge from New Zealand in revitalizing New Zealand urban areas.
But co design and co creation have been core to both courses and just supplementing those answers.
We have a question over here, please.
I offer a winter school on social entrepreneurship in India.
I really like the fifth module because normally in courses, I couldn't see the action part, but I appreciate for including the fifth module.
My question is innovation and entrepreneurship is something not really easy to teach.
What are the pedagogical conversations you had while preparing the fifth module? Can you repeat the last part? What are the pedagogical? While designing the course, I'm sure there might be discussion regarding how to offer the course, how to offer the pedagogy, what techniques should be used.
What are some of the conversations you had while designing the course about the delivery part of the fit module? Because innovation and entrepreneurship in my experience, it's not that easy to teach.
Yeah.
Should I start answering that? Well, first of all, we try to, like I said, have very short lectures, and then we have student exercises and we have student questions throughout.
We have group work also.
Then the last modules for both courses, students have to present a project, or they have to come up with a business design to graduate from the course.
We encourage students to develop their own business model.
It could be for an NGO, it can be for private sector company.
It can be for developing a government proposal.
We also have role plays in both courses, and we put students in the role of being a government official, of being a farmer, and we really put them in the position of trying to empower them to see what it's like to be in these roles and to present their business models to the other groups as well.
We have also documentary films of businesses around the world that have been created.
With the idea of land restoration.
To give exposure to students on what is possible.
Do you want to add anything microphone? Yeah, I think, as I was saying, it's to unpack the innovation and to look at an innovation with different perspectives, look at it from a technological perspective, like the pure agroforestry, for example, whether it's assisted natural regeneration or it's enrichment planting, that innovation.
But you also look at the from a social angle.
What does that innovation mean for the people in the landscape who are dependent on the land? How do they deal with that? How do they get on board with that? Then it's also about the economic aspect of that.
In the course, I think the business model canvas as a tool, for example, we'll look at what is your innovation? What is it that you want to put into create a business around? Who is involved? What are the risks and the opportunities? It's a guided tool that actually unpacks the innovation and helps you decide on whether the innovation is actually feasible or not and what it would take to make it feasible.
In the sense where is your opportunity and what would your role be then to make the innovation a success? I just wanted to share that.
Were there any other questions? Yes.
We have a microphone here? We have a question in the front? Now, you're supposed to ask a tricky question of your colleagues here, Seca.
I have a question about more of a point of view of a student who is still in university.
I find the course very interesting and I would love if it's implemented in my university.
I'm wondering, how can we as students promote this course to our universities? Is there any support platform that we can present to them, convince them? Because I think it's a very, I'm coming from a faculty of environment not environmental.
And biosystems and food engineering, elemental studies.
I think it's very important to have these types of courses.
Thank you.
That's an excellent question.
We have these little postcards that are lying around on some of the chairs.
Take some of those and give them to your professor and have them email me.
I'd be happy to have a Zoom call with them.
You're also our ambassadors, which is why we wanted many students here because the future is with you.
If we want a new generation of land restorers, it starts with education.
So, yeah, we have many of these postcards, more in the back of the room.
So please pick up a postcard, give it to your professor.
I'm happy to talk to them and they can download the course.
Like I said, it's been translated into Spanish and Arabic for the agriculture course.
It's being translated into Spanish, French, and Russian as well.
For the urban course, I should mention that we're actually going to be doing a training of trainers program, which will be coming up starting in September, October, running through March.
We're going to be having 53 day online trainings.
This is a good time to sign up for the urban course.
We're going to be going into details into the course over 3.5 days online.
It's free, of course, and we want as many of you to participate graduate students, but also professors, training institutions, government can join and you get a certificate at the end.
We'll be announcing that.
Do sign up for our newsletter, the G 20 newsletter, you'll be getting information on this.
And we have, like I said, a beautiful website.
The download system is not quite functioning right now, but my email is functioning and I was right back to you.
I'm glad I remember that we're having our trainer of trainers program coming up.
We forgot to mention that.
Do we have any other questions? Question in the back.
Bethany.
Hi.
Thanks, Karen.
It's a comment more than a question because there's so many people here who would be interested.
Karen, I think you know that SCR, Society for Ecological Restoration is developing a massive open online course on the science of restoration ecology, which underpins all the restoration anybody's doing anywhere in urban or et cetera.
The first module of that is live.
The second module is coming out in October and the third probably in February.
It's 35 ish hours at university level course and there will also be and it's an open online course, so professors can also use the content.
But similar ish to what you're doing with Trigger Change, we're also going to be offering a university level course with the additional 100 hours of contact time for three credits.
I've talked with the professors who are developing that and they're happy to share that with other professors so that other professors can use that.
It's not as formalized as what you're doing.
But I just wanted to let folks here know that that's also available because it's very supportive of what you're doing and fills a slightly different niche than these courses and we need all of them.
I'm really thrilled with what you guys have done.
It's super exciting and just congratulations for the incredible work to put this together.
Thank you so much, Bethany.
Actually, that's a great segue to talking about our next MOC, massive open online course, which is called Opportunities and and Restoration.
It's a bit different and very complementary to what you're doing at the Society for ecological Restoration.
This is a freely open course.
The other ones that we talked about were probably geared a little bit more towards universities and professors or educators.
This one is for everybody.
It's especially for youth.
We want to give positive stories about land restoration and give hope to youth who might be feeling a bit of eco anxiety, might be feeling a little bit of maybe AI anxiety is AI going to take my job away? But we believe that there is a future in land restoration.
There's more and more demand for professionals in land restoration.
There's more and more demand for professionals with green skills.
This move is giving positive stories about what is land restoration at a little bit more of the basic level than the large course that you're doing, Bethany.
Again, Murley has given me the modest goal of reaching 1 million learners.
He's not here now, but thank you Murley for giving us a target of 1 million learners, and so we're going to do our best to meet that.
We're going to make the best move ever because it's going to be really popular and easy to follow.
It's also going to give a lot of information on career pathways.
What are the different careers that you can pursue in land restoration? Not just about tree planting, although tree planting is pretty cool.
There's also GIS, there's drone pilots, there's scientists, there's engineers, environmental engineers.
There's a whole host of careers in land restoration and this MO is to give you ideas on different careers you can pursue.
We're going to be interviewing lots of people involved in land restoration, including you, Bethany, in a couple of days, to talk about your career pathways and how you got involved in this field.
Do sign up.
We're working hard on this MOC.
We're going to be filming with a professional filmmaker in Valencia, Spain in a few weeks and it should be launched in January 2027 if all goes well.
Yeah, the QR code, sign up to receive information on that.
I think there was one more question in the back of the room, the gentleman here, and we have one more question.
Do we have the microphone still? Ricky is working really hard.
You know what? I want to take while we're waiting for Ricky to go with the microphone.
I really want to give a round of applause to our interns.
We don't thank them enough.
Rick was our first intern and she spent the whole summer putting together a master list of 1,000 universities working on agriculture so we could contact them.
Sandra worked last summer to develop or this winter, I don't remember, to work on the urban course.
We don't thank them enough.
So thanks again to our interns for all the work they've been doing.
A question from the back of the room, the gentleman in the white suit.
Thank you so much.
My name is Freddie from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I work for Women Concern, and I'm a practitioner in land restoration.
My question is about the land restoration course.
I see the course that have been developed is a course that is a specifically for those people who are already educated or maybe may have other opportunities to get that education.
But I think there is something that should be thought on.
Those people on the ground who also need that knowledge Is there any way you can improve your courses so that they might be accessible to those ground people, the local communities? And if also there might be any way you can partner with like minded grassroots organizations so that you may develop those courses that respond directly to the need of those local people using also their local knowledge or their indigenous knowledge because they have already some knowledge that they used to restore their lands, but their knowledge is not yet structured So I'm wondering if there is a way you can manage maybe to make those courses available to those people maybe through partnering with those grassroot organizations around the communities.
Thank you.
This is a very important question.
So thank you for the question.
So it's true that the course can be downloaded by anybody, but a lot of NGOs have downloaded our course materials and have adapted them.
For working with local communities.
I have interacted with many NGOs who have written to me asking, well, these courses are a little bit more for university students.
I said, well, you can download all of the materials and you can adapt them.
That's not a problem.
This SOC is open to anybody and thanks to AI, we will have everything translated into many, many languages.
So, this one is going to be, like I said, online, free, and available to anybody.
But also the more formal course, which goes into more depth, can also be downloaded.
A, I would say a third of everybody who's used our courses are NGOs working at the local level.
And they have taken some of our materials, maybe simplified, added more local case studies, and using them with local communities.
So it's a very important audience, and it's very possible to do that.
Okay.
We have one more question there, and I think we're going to wrap up.
Final question from our friend from Brazil.
Okay.
First, I would like to congratulate you for the massive effort.
I think this is quite different from what I was thinking in Brazil when I answered that we have a lot of opportunities there.
Restoration is a really important thing in Brazil.
I'm a practitioner as well, but it's not massive.
Now I understand I will change my previous reply.
This is massive and this massive initiative is also very welcome.
I'm very curious how do you track after the person finished the course, how do you track how those knowledge are being implemented, if they are being implemented, how they are being implemented.
If you regularly change or adapt your course to those challenges or whatever, the monitoring part is very complicated for us in Brazil and I'm very curious about this.
Again, congratulations.
Thank you for the question.
If we can have a little bit less noise coming from the back of the room, so that we can hear the questions.
We're almost done with the session and then I was hoping you would tell us about the successes from Brazil, but how do we monitor? We hand out surveys.
It's very important that we follow up.
The agriculture course, we've done two surveys.
It's been out for two years now.
It's really hard to get people to respond to our surveys.
We offer them goodies like sending them books.
I should offer to send them Swiss chocolates, but we thought maybe that wouldn't be a good idea for hot countries.
But we managed to get really good response rate for our first survey around 25%, which is pretty good.
The second survey a bit less.
But we know for a fact that 60% of the universities are using our course materials, which is why I was pretty confident with that statistic that I put up.
We also know that some people have had difficulties downloading our courses, and so we need to change our downloading system so that people can access our courses.
We always get the feedback we need more case studies.
That is difficult for us to do now that we've developed the course.
We have ten case studies representative of all the different ecosystems from all different parts of the world.
But we encourage you when you teach the course to include your own case studies.
We're a bit limited.
The course has been out for two years now.
I haven't been given any instructions to renew it yet.
But it's true that after two to three years one should renew a course.
We're a bit lacking in that regard, but we do follow up.
We try to follow up every six to nine months with a survey of course recipients to see how they're using the course.
We're very happy with the result that over 60% are already using our course materials.
Thank you for that.
I'd like to hand out the microphone now for concluding remarks.
From each of the participants.
Maybe Cecilia, you're a bit disappointed that your friends didn't ask you a tricky question because they promised they would.
But you can go ahead and start with a few concluding remarks.
Over to you.
Just very brief.
I'm sorry.
Concluding, I have a quote I really would like to say, I think it's very important as well.
Miss Jane Go said that if you disagree with someone, listen to them, and then if you still disagree, stand up for what you believe in, which is very important.
I think that is the major role of your people in future and now.
Yeah.
The concluding remarks.
For me as a student, I would say, everything that you can get, just try to use it, learn it, and do whatever that you think is right, especially for your education.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
At the very beginning, we saw in the poll that actually awareness is one of the most hindering aspects.
Unfortunately, I think we got aware of the problem this summer, the last few months actually.
Coming from Europe, we went out there to see rain because we haven't seen rain for a long time and saying that from Switzerland, it's quite exceptional.
We are aware of the problem now and that may also help now to raise awareness for solutions.
Perhaps that's also the momentum to bring this course up again and really to show they are solution existing.
Now we have to tackle it.
Education is a major solution to land degradation.
Over to you too.
Yeah, I think that's very true.
Just to share, Karen, your environmental education background.
I started there.
I environmental education, we always talk about education about the environment, education in the environment and education for the environment.
I think that this course actually tries to bring these things together.
I also want to say a word of thanks to the team because behind the scenes and what happens in course design and bringing all these people together and negotiating and discussing, it's tremendous and what you're pulling off with this initiative, it's really impressive.
I just want to give my accolades to you for that.
Yeah.
Hi.
It's.
Thank you, Karen.
I would say that environmental education should be far more accessible to everybody, and I think these open courses definitely contribute to that because sometimes, at least in my country, Sometimes environmental education is seen as something you only have access when you have a certain level of education.
I find two questions in the audience very interesting, how to translate these products also to different audiences, but also how to find a way so that this is not static knowledge and it adapts and it involves and includes different experiences.
I only have one question.
Who is the other Mexican in the audience? Because I saw that there was another Mexican.
Hi there.
All right, Alejandra found a friend.
Let's give an applause for that.
We have one more for Mexico, Fabiola.
Actually, you need to talk.
I want to advertise another session tomorrow Education for Land.
We'll be having actually a high school student talking about regreening effort in Mongolia.
It's going to be a pack session.
So come for that tomorrow here in the action dome at 2:30.
And with that, I'd like to close our session.
I think we'll have one photo.
There's my email, and we have a reception to celebrate this, I would say, lovely activity with our partners.
With that, I'd like to thank you all for participating and stay on for more fun here, as well as see you tomorrow as well.
Thank you again to everybody and our communications team, Donie, Claire, Wagai and everybody who supported.
Thank you again.