4 Online Part time Certificate Programmes in Environmental Studies 2024

This certificate combines aspects of science, technology and social science to help you understand the environments in which we live and work; how our activities influence them; how they influence what we do; and how can we live sustainably within them.

Biodiversity underpins life on Earth. Healthy ecosystems provide ecosystem services essential to human well-being and economic activities. Scientists estimate that one million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are on the verge of extinction, and this could curtail our ability to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Climate change presents a risk to the global economy and consequently the finance sector. However, it also presents an opportunity for innovative financing to increase the economic and social resilience to climate impacts. As facilitators of the economy, financial institutions have a central role in the transformation to low carbon and climate-resilient development. Their responsibility is twofold: greening their portfolios towards Paris compatible financing and investments, and reflecting and integrating climate-related risks into their risk management processes. This gradual process involves harmonizing short-term business cycles and investment horizons with systemic and long-term thinking by all actors from the financial sector (e.g. banks, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, investment consultants, regulators, rating agencies). This process is supported by public actors who moderate the structural change required for a transition to climate-resilient economies. This course provides the basics of finance and investment for assessing the financial viability of investments in adaptation projects. It clusters business models to provide an understanding of the parameters according to the project scale and, for example, revenue models, ownership structure, and value proposition, and will link to the financing perspective. Different investors and intermediaries have very different investment strategies, levels of risk appetite, return expectations, and investment horizons. Crowding in the right investor for a project is essential to ensure their long-term involvement and the required scale-up of investment volumes.

This e-learning course is developed and implemented jointly with the Frankfurt School - UNEP Collaborating Cente. The Paris Agreement marks the beginning of a new era with the focus shifting from finding a consensus on the common goals to realizing jointly agreed goals. “Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” (Article 2 c of the Paris Agreement) will require a significant increase in funding – with new instruments and approaches required to mobilize a broad range of investors and to achieve scalability in financing climate action. Financing the global energy transition will be one key building block. Decreasing prices for renewables combined with increasing regulatory risk for traditional fossil fuels make Renewable Energy (RE) more competitive and attractive for commercial investors.