Water Stewardship in Action for Water and Food Security 2021

Wetlands play an essential role in supporting food security, in making water resources management sustainable and in adapting to climate change impacts. How do we prevent that wetlands continue to disappear in the same rate as in the past and that these valuable ecosystem services are lost? This course is dedicated to water stewards, who can advocate the value of wetlands.

What will you learn?

Upon completion of the course you will:

• Have a greater understanding of the essence of integrated water resources management and water stewardship;
• Have a better understanding of the interactions between agriculture and wetlands;
• Have improved your skills to facilitate multi-stakeholder processes and be familiar with supportive tools;
• Have improved your communication, negotiation, lobby and advocacy skills;
• Know better how to deal with conflict.

Course programme in more detail

We have learned that restoring and maintaining wetlands is often cheaper than man-made solutions to guarantee water and food security. Without wetlands, the water cycle, carbon cycle and nutrient cycle would be significantly altered. Did you know for instance that 40% of wetland habitats have been lost over the last 40 years? Ramsar COP12 opened with this reminder, challenging delegates to address long-standing misperceptions in many sectors about the services wetlands provide to humans and about the need to value wetland services for improved decision making. Investing in your wetlands, thus reinstalling their often degraded functions and services, might financially even be very attractive and benefit local or national economies.

How to register:

For who is this course?

This course has been designed for wetland managers; for river basin and land-use planners; for policymakers, consultants, researchers, NGO and company staff involved with IWRM, wetlands and food security; and for those who wish to become a (better) water steward.

You need to:

• Have at least a Bachelor level qualification or equivalent educational background;
• Have at least two years of professional experience in water management and/or food security and/or climate change resilience;
• Be currently involved in water management and/or food security and/or climate change resilience;
• Be fluent in spoken and written English.

To register, please visit the following link.

The Application Procedure

1. Register for the course of your interest by clicking the ‘apply’ button on the webpage of this course. A registration form will open;
2. Fill in the required fields of the registration form. Please note to write your date of birth without a zero (e.g. 1-5-1980 instead of 01-05-1980);
3. Before you submit, check your details on the final page of the registration form;
4. After submitting, you will receive a confirmation email. Make sure to directly click on the link in the email to confirm your registration. Without your confirmation, your registration cannot be processed;
5. If you apply as an OKP or MSP-scholarship candidate, you will receive a registration letter for the scholarship at the beginning of the scholarship cycle.
6. If you apply as a self-funded participant: we will forward your request for acceptance to the course leader. This can take some time as it depends on the coordinators' schedule (1-3 weeks);
7. If you’re accepted into the course programme, we’ll send you an admission letter by e-mail;
8. You receive all required travel documents from us after you are selected for the scholarship (OKP/MSP-scholarship candidates) or when we’ve received your payment (self-funded participant).

Technology Requirements Online Learning

Minimum technical and software requirements for online learning courses are:

• Stable internet connection: required to access the online learning platform and assignments (at least 3G mobile network).
• Hardware requirement: acces to a laptop, smartphone, tablet or a personal computer with webcam and microphone.