Green skills for Underwater Technologies – Week training
WWF Portugal
Reference Teacher: Cátia Nunes
Teacher(s): Cátia Nunes and Madalena Lopes
This course aims to promote the development of green skills among its participants. It gives a general overview on topics related to sustainable development, environmental challenges, nature-based solutions, stakeholders engagement and nature- based solutions. The main goal is to allow the participants to be able to ideate new sustainable tools to be implemented within the underwater technologies sector.
The modules of this course were piloted within two Masters degrees from the Faculty of Sciences in Lisbon (Masters in Marine Ecology and Masters in Environmental Ecology and Management – within the seminary disciplines) and in AMU masters and PhD degrees. The modules and methodologies can be adapted to different target groups but aims to focus on Bachelor, Masters and PhD degrees
Students will develop skills and knowledge for identifying the major environmental challenges and the role of green skills in addressing these challenges.
Students will develop knowledge and know-how to apply basic principles of sustainability and green thinking to develop nature-based solutions for real-world problems.
Students will enhance their ability to analyze the ethical implications of environmental decisions and policies.
Students will develop communication skills by presenting their Nature-Based Solutions, highlighting the benefits of green skills for the environment, economy and society.
Students will develop their learning skills by engaging in continuous reflection and self-assessment to improve their understanding and application of green skills.
The course focuses on lifelong learning education. It’s not essential but a previous knowledge of nature sciences can be helpful for an easier understanding of the contents of the course.
Seminars and group dynamics.
A questionnaire will be distributed to understand the level of knowledge and skills developed within the course
The modules will be created as part of a week program course but can be reached individually. This will be the basis for allowing partners or other institutions to be able to integrate or use specific modules within their courses and curriculums.
This course contributes to SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 14 (Life below water) and SGD 17 (Partnerships for the goals).
If you are interested in develop one, or more, of these modules, please reach out to Cátia Nunes (cnunes@wwf.pt) or Madalena Lopes (mlopes@wwf.pt).
To have a brief overview of the courses you can also check this video
Course Modules: The educational material and syllabus include:
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
- UNESCO Key competencies on Education for Sustainable Development: UNESCO identifies key competencies necessary for sustainable development, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaborative skills.
These competencies aim to empower individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting responsible actions and decisions.
- Green skills concept
- Global Trends and skills development: The demand for green skills is increasing globally as industries and economies shift towards more sustainable practices.
- Lifelong learning skills: Hard skills and soft skills
- Green skills relevance for UW technologies: Concept (Designing sustainable UW technologies); Manufacturing (Producing these technologies with minimal environmental impact); Use (Operating UW technologies in an eco-friendly manner) and Discarding (Proper disposal or recycling of UW technologies to minimize environmental harm).
- Climate change, what is happening to people & planet: Compromising nature compromises the people. Climate change threatens human health directly – by changing the weather, altering the distribution of vector-borne and other infectious diseases, and worsening air pollution – and indirectly – by causing under-nutrition, harder working conditions, and mental stress.
- Main drivers for climate change: energy, industry, land use, transportation and buildings.
- Marine ecosystems environmental challenges: Climate Change, Pollution, Invasive Species, Over-harvesting and Habitat Loss.
- Overview of ecosystems services: The identification of environmental services in a participatory manner can assist in the making of responsible decisions based on prior knowledge of the likely impacts on natural capital and social well-being.
- Water and land main uses: resources
- Underwater main uses: resources
- What are the main threats and impacts for nature & people?
- How can these resources be managed in a responsible way?
- Best practices in UW techs to minimize impacts: Material Selection; Energy Efficiency; Minimal Disturbance; Green Manufacturing Processes; Waste Management; Supply Chain Management; Training and Education; Monitoring and Maintenance; Operational Guidelines; Recycling Programs:; Safe Disposal Methods; Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR); Remote Sensing and Monitoring; Automated Systems; Regulatory Compliance; Stakeholder Engagement; Continuous Improvement; UW mapping technologies for biodiversity conservation and habitat protection.
- Active citizenship definition and examples (students are asked to fill the figure below with actions they already perform).
- Effective citizenship definition and examples.
- Capacity building for individual and community empowerment: different approaches and methodologies: Bottom up and top-down approaches; ladder of involvement.
- Connecting active and effective citizenship with nature protection and UW technologies
- Natured based solution focusing on technology.
- Underwtaer technologies approaches for nature-based solutions.
- Food for tough: are we including people and communities in nature-based solutions?
- Collaboration: Community engagement, why is it important? Community engagement is crucial because it fosters trust, improves decision-making and ensures that the needs and perspectives of the community are not overviewed..
- Stakeholders: Identifying and mapping
- Engagement; Different strategies and approaches to engage with communities and stakeholders
- Good practices – examples
- What is project management and why is it important?
- Building an action, project, or program. What does it take? Focus on the different steps: Ideation, conception, planning, execution, monitoring and control, celebrate.
- Theory of change and SMART goals: Learning how to use templates for SMART goals development process.
- Design thinking and behavior change. Using the COM-B model: The COM-B model for behavior change cites capability (C), opportunity (O), and motivation (M) as three key factors capable of changing behavior (B).
- Leadership approaches
- Applying design thinking and all the knowledge and skills developed during the course to create a sustainable UW technology solution to mitigate an environmental challenge
- By design, NbS for climate mitigation interventions seek to address three intertwined global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and inequitable development.
- They simultaneously prioritize the improvement of livelihoods and human well-being, the protection and enhancement of nature, and the generation of carbon reductions or removals – and the solutions will only be effective and sustainable in the long term if the three are addressed together. NbS for climate mitigation interventions must build broad, multi-stakeholder support, with inclusive consultation from the design stage through to implementation and action.
- How: Design for multiple benefits; Involve local communities; Institute environmental and social safeguards and Focus on preventing nature loss.
- Presentation of the sustainable UW solution.
- Criteria for evaluation:
- Integration of topics learnt
- Innovation and creativity
- Clarity of speech
- Doability of the solution
- Application of SMART goals
- Quality and extension of stakeholder mapping
- Cooley, S., D. Schoeman, L. Bopp, P. Boyd, S. Donner, D.Y. Ghebrehiwet, S.-I. Ito, W. Kiessling, P. Martinetto, E. Ojea, M.-F. Racault, B. Rost, and M. Skern-Mauritzen, 2022: Oceans and Coastal Ecosystems and Their Services. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 379–550, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.005.
- IUCN (2020). Guidance for using the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, First edition. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.
- WWF (2022) Living Planet Report 2022 – Building a nature positive society. Almond, R.E.A., Grooten, M., Juffe Bignoli,D. & Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
- WWF (2023) A Behaviour Change Toolkit
- [online: https://sites.google.com/wwf.panda.org/wwfbehaviourchange/home]