Urban Gamechanger for Sustainability

Overview

Syllabus

Courses

• 7 reviews

  7 weeks, 2-4 hours a week, 2-4 hours a week

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  Skill set for sustainability
  Nowadays there is a lot of talk about environmental sustainability, yet it has come to mean different things in different contexts. Although defining sustainability is complicated, understanding it is crucial in helping us solve urgent global issues. The newly emerging field of ‘sustainability science’ has identified a set of skills, critical to analysing and solving sustainability problems.

  In the MOOC Becoming an Agent of Sustainable Change, we will introduce you to these essential skills in an applied and interactive way. Through assignments, real-world inspirational cases of sustainability leaders, self-reflection and discussions with fellow learners, you will sharpen and personalise your skills. It will empower you to start your journey as an agent of sustainable change.

  Personal sustainability project
  As the course progresses, you will be able to directly set off sustainable development by applying these newly acquired skills to a real-world problem in your own living environment. You will choose a project of personal relevance to you, which can be any sustainability issue - big or small – that you wish to effect and change! For example:

  • start a weekly community to limit food waste or recycle
  • promote a plant rich diet by raising awareness at your work, or
  • set up a project for renewable energy and insulation in your neighbourhood.

  It’s up to you!

  Start today
  So, are you eager to see a solution to the complex issues our world faces? Sustainable development can happen today, if you it want to. Join the growing force of environmental gamechangers and pick up the sustainability challenges you see near you. Take the lead, enrol now!

• 0 reviews

  3 weeks, 3-5 hours a week, 3-5 hours a week

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  ‘In our triumph to dominate the world, we forgot just how much we depend on it.’

  Conflict between nature and humans
  By 2050, over two-thirds of the world’s population of 10 billion people will be living in cities. This logically leads to increasing competition for natural resources between people and nature. People and businesses struggle to meet their need for space. At the same time, the loss of nature within urban areas leads to a whole host of problems, from heat islands and flooding to air pollution and rising ghg emmisions. This relationship is extremely close, yet, people still tend analyse these issues separately.

  Not only does biodiverse and connected greenery and water bodies play a vital role in increasing a city’s climate resilience. Nature is conditional for creating a healthy living environment for its inhabitants. Because when people reconnect to nature, more than a frivolous enjoyment, their physical and mental health improve.

  What is urban rewilding
  Rewilding is a form of restoration ecology, but not all restoration ecology is rewilding. Though ecology-led, rewilding takes on a multidisciplinary systems level approach to ecosystem structure, function and processes. By prioritizing nature protection and restoration, it creates conditions for complex and self-regulating ecosystems. As such, urban rewilding aims to alleviate disturbances in nature in developed urban areas.

  Improve your living environment by reintroducing nature
  When individual citizens and urban communities prioritize nature-inclusive and climate-adaptive solutions in their neighbourhoods, the balance between city dwellers and nature can be restored. By trading in pavement and parking lots for green roofs, rain gardens and living walls citizens can achieve:

  1. Better climate adaptation: by creating urban storm parcs cities can absorb excess precipitation during extreme weather events, while saving water for dry spells.
  2. Alleviation of urban heat islands: a decrease of up to 1°C daytime temperature can limit excess deaths associated with heatwaves.
  3. (Re)generate urban biodiversity: by choosing the right tree to plant, complete miniature ecosystems can be created, because compared to exotics plants and trees, indigenous vegetation fosters tenfold amounts of biodiversity.

  In this course, you will become familiar with various theories and nature-based solutions related to rewilding your surroundings. You will explore examples around you and sort out the role you can play in the process of urban rewilding. Along the way you can start creating your own personal project.

  For whom?
  Whether you are a city resident interested in improving the living environment of your city or otherwise interested in a citizen’s perspective on sustainable cities and rewilding topics from, this course is for you. Learn how nature is important for cities and city dwellers from a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach. Join Wageningen University & Research and create the circumstances for effective urban rewilding near you!

Taught by

Robin van der Sluijs, Judith Lesschen, Lina Dilly, Arend de Haas, Merel Witteman, Haoyu Yang, Jonas Skutka, Miia Hakkinen, Matthias Krins, Tossa Harding and Sarah Foley

Tags

• netherlands