News

Dear friends of UNU-LRT. The year 2018 will soon come to an end. On that occasion we would like to thank everyone we have collaborated with during the year and we look forward to a continuing collaboration. We send our best wishes for the festive season ahead and wish you a Happy New Year.

In celebration of the Word Soil Day on 5 December, the ENABLE consortium announced the creation of a new massive open online course (MOOC) on Business Model Innovation for Sustainable Landscape Restoration, which is now open for registration. The MOOC is co-created by UNU-LRT and other partners in the ENABLE consortium and will be launched on 14 February 2019.

A two-day Experiential Learning module, developed by the ENABLE consortium, was held in southeast Spain in late October. The interactive field excursions focused on equipping the participants with the skills and knowledge required to restore landscapes while bringing back social, cultural, and financial benefits to society. Participants experienced the impacts of land degradation on nature, society and economy, and studied how to prevent degradation. They also experienced different solutions to restore landscapes based on sustainable business models, and explored the importance of land restoration for ecosystem services. UNU-LRT sponsored two participants from UNU-LRT partner organizations to attend the Experiential Learning module. They were Irene Jamilatu Yenuyet Yaro from the Environmental Protection Agency in Ghana and Enkh‐Amgalan Tseelei from the National Federation of Pasture User Groups of Herders (NFPUG) in Mongolia.

UNU-LRT is collaborating in the development of a short massive open online course (MOOC) on sheep grazing, management and land conservation in Iceland. This micro-MOOC titled Sheep in the Land of Fire and Ice examines the sustainability of sheep grazing in Iceland and explores how history, socioeconomic factors and environmental conditions have influenced the management of grazing resources. Grazing management is a common challenge in many regions of the world, and this course uses Iceland as a case study because here traditional sheep grazing has been associated with extensive environmental degradation.

The 11th SER Europe conference was held in Reykjavík, Iceland from 9-13 September. The main theme of the conference was Restoration in the Era of Climate Change. UNU-LRT had very good presence at the conference as all 17 fellows in the UNU-LRT six-month training programme this year took part in the conference, as well as 17 former UNU-LRT fellows. All were sponsored by UNU-LRT to attend the conference.

On 14 September 17 fellows graduated from the annual six-month training programme at UNU-LRT. The graduation of the 10 women and 7 men was celebrated with a ceremony at the Keldnaholt research campus of the Agricultural University of Iceland. Two of the graduating fellows came from Tajikistan, a new UNU-LRT partner country. Other fellows from Asia came from Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and fellows from Africa came from Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, and Uganda.