FAO

In today’s globalized world, different types of risks related to natural hazards, the climate, epidemics, conflicts or economic shocks are increasingly coinciding and interacting with each other. This can result in crises with cascading effects across systems and sectors and cause high levels of uncertainty. We, therefore, need joined-up efforts within the United Nations System and beyond to build resilience that can transcend a range of risks across sectors, systems and stakeholders.

This course will introduce you to the UN system’s shared understanding of resilience. It will help you reflect on what you can do to build resilience and connect you to resources to support your resilience-building journey.

Learning Objectives

• The concept of resilience, the four elements of resilience-building and the five types of resilience capacities.
• The rationale for investing in resilience building as a prerequisite for sustainable development across different risk, crisis and development challenges.
• The shared principles for implementing resilience building interventions, including tools and practices for using a resilience lens in joined-up UN planning processes in support of countries’ resilience building efforts.
• Opportunities for UN teams to better collaborate in resilience-building through partnerships, coordination, and financing.

Why link social protection to climate-risk management? How can social protection contribute to inclusive climate risk management strategies? What are the main challenges and opportunities for integrating social protection and climate risk management?
Using an illustrative scenario, the course will guide you through the different ways in which social protection can contribute to inclusive climate risk management. A strategy that addresses the needs of poor and vulnerable rural communities.
The course offers data, examples and evidence to better understand how these two approaches can come together to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Learning Objectives

• The rationale for linking social protection to climate risk management
• The main functions of social protection and its impacts across a wide range of areas
• The different roles that social protection can play in supporting small-scale food producers in the face of climate change and climate risks
• Main challenges and opportunities at the policy and programme level

This course introduces simulation exercises as part of preparedness for animal disease emergencies. It explains the processes involved in planning, conducting and evaluating simulation exercises. It also describes the various tools, approaches and strategies to support decision-making, as well as the different phases of an exercise.

Learning Objectives

• Importance of simulation exercises and the purposes for which they can be used.
• Purpose and key components of a needs-based, multi-year exercise plan.
• Importance of a concept note in defining the aim and objectives before proceeding with further planning.
• Scenario documents required for a small tabletop exercise or drill.
• How to conduct a small tabletop exercise or drill.

This course looks at the relationship between crop production and climate change. It explores the principles and practices for sustainable and profitable production of annual and perennial crops to meet food, feed, energy, fibre needs and foster economic growth in a variety of contexts and crop systems.

Learning Objectives

• The expected impacts of climate change on crop production
• Climate-smart crop management practices, including management of soil, land, pests, water and biodiversity, use of seeds and mechanization and decision making technologies
• How climate-smart crop management can be applied in specific production systems, such as annual, horticultural and grasslands
• Off farm elements that can create an enabling environment for adoption of climate-smart crop production

This course analyses the role of livestock production in climate-smart agriculture. It describes the importance of livestock production to food security and identifies adaptation and mitigation strategies and practices along the entire livestock supply chain. It also illustrates how livestock keeping is itself an adaptation strategy and how the sector can contribute to the global mitigation effort.

Learning Objectives

• The impact of climate change on livestock and how livestock production contributes to climate change
• The importance of livestock production to food security
• Strategies for achieving climate-smart livestock (resource use efficiency, waste management and soil sequestration) and livestock keeping as an adaptation strategy
• How to overcome barriers to climate-smart livestock production

This course focuses on water management and its critical role in climate-smart agriculture. It analyses the impacts of climate change on the availability of freshwater resources for agriculture and considers possible water management options for adaptation to climate change and for climate change mitigation.

Learning Objectives

• The current status, trends and challenges in water resources management
• The impacts of climate change on water resources for agriculture
• The main water management options for climate change adaptation
• Tools and approaches for preparing water management responses to climate change in agriculture
• Measures pertaining to water management to mitigate GHG emissions in agriculture

Focusing on freshwater systems, this course inspires managers, scientists, and community members to work across disciplines and watersheds. The course coaches learners to understand, monitor, and manage watersheds as integrated systems. Lessons begin with watershed function and then focus on forests, freshwater, and fisheries. In each case emphasizing interlinkages, spatial structure, seasonality, benefits to humans, and simple monitoring indicators. Project work in the upper Kafue River watershed, one of the headwaters of the Zambezi River in Zambia, and in the Magdalena and Atrato Rivers, Colombia, offer local perspectives and convincing case studies for understanding and managing on-the-ground conditions.

Learning Objectives

• Principles and ideas for multidisciplinary management across watersheds.
• Interlinkages between forestry, freshwater, climate, fisheries, and the riparian communities who depend on them as well as why watershed-based management is a key to sustainability.
• Ideas for developing indicators that can support monitoring of forests, freshwater, and fisheries as well as guidance for initiating a watershed management plan.

This series of four courses is designed to improve understanding of Codex Alimentarius and develop sustainable national capacities to engage in and benefit from Codex work. The third course provides information on the scientific basis and the application of risk analysis in Codex and explains how FAO/WHO scientific advice is used in the development of Codex standards. It also describes the interactions between FAO/WHO expert bodies and relevant Codex Committees and explains why and how countries can contribute to the provision of scientific advice.

Learning Objectives

• The importance of science and risk analysis in Codex work.
• Risk analysis and its main components.
• Roles, functions, and procedures of the FAO/WHO scientific advice programme.
• Why and how countries can contribute to FAO/WHO provision of scientific advice.

This course introduces the Progressive Management Pathway for Aquaculture Biosecurity (PMP/AB) which uses a risk-based approach to improve the overall sustainability of the aquaculture sector.

Learning Objectives

• The Progressive Management Pathway for Aquaculture Biosecurity (PMP/AB). 
• Risk analysis approach as it applies to aquaculture biosecurity.
• How import risk analysis (IRA) can be used to manage disease risks associated with the importation of live aquatic organisms.
• The application of risk analysis along the aquaculture value chain. 

This course has been designed to support the inclusion of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches in the fisheries and aquaculture sector. It provides technical knowledge on these concepts and examines how implementation of CSA practices can enhance mitigation and adaptation to climate change in the sector.

Learning Objectives

• General facts of the fisheries and aquaculture sector  
• The main impacts of climate change on the sector, and their implications  
• Rationale of the CSA approaches and three main thematic areas 
• Main responses/measures for climate-smart fisheries and aquaculture  
• Practical climate-smart applications to different contexts and lessons learned