UN CC:Learn

19/10/2026

A city council has a climate plan. A neighbourhood association has a list of streets that flood every rainy season. A local business wants to help but doesn’t know who to call. All three are working on the same problem, a few blocks apart, and none of them is talking to the others.

That gap is what Weaving Urban Futures sets out to close.

The new e-course from UN CC:Learn and UNU-EHS uses case studies from five Latin American cities. In each one, coalitions of residents, governments, civil society and businesses tackled social inequality and climate impacts at the same time. Across five modules, you’ll learn how to:

🤝 Build a place-based coalition that holds together
🔍 Understand local challenges together, and spot what you don’t yet know
🌱 Turn a shared vision into a story people want to commit to
🏛️ Find the partnerships and governance setups that move ideas into action
📊 Track what works, learn from it and share it

The course is self-paced and designed for citymakers: urban practitioners, local authorities, policymakers, grassroots groups, NGOs, businesses, funders and engaged citizens. Learners who pass the final quiz can earn an official UN certificate of completion.

🎬 We’re launching the course with a film premiere and a conversation with Oscar-winning filmmaker Dirk Wilutzky on 22 October 2026 at 4pm CEST. Join on Zoom: https://uncclearn-org.zoom.us/j/89934324315 (password: 737827)

15/10/2026

Special invitation💡 On the edge of a fast-growing city, the afternoon heat hangs over streets that were built quickly and never properly connected. Getting to work means a long ride into the centre. Water runs short in summer. Yet in neighbourhoods like this, residents, local officials and community groups are sitting down together to picture what their streets could look like in twenty years, and then starting to build it.

The final Transformative Urban Coalitions (TUC) film follows people doing this work in five cities across Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, from Buenos Aires to Naucalpan. It was directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy, and it premieres at our next Fireside Chat, where we also launch Weaving Urban Futures, a new e-course in collaboration with United Nations University.

After the screening, Dirk Wilutzky will talk with Andrea Ramirez-Agudelo (UNU-EHS) about why climate action needs imagination as well as evidence, and what happens when storytelling and science meet on screen. Cristina Rekakavas (UNITAR) will show you around the course, and there will be time for your questions.

🗓️ 22 October 2026 at 2pm CEST | 75 min | Free, on Zoom
🔗 Join: https://uncclearn-org.zoom.us/j/89934324315
Meeting ID: 899 3432 4315
Password: 737827

25/09/2026

On 31 July, a female tiger called Umit stepped out of a cage in southeastern 🇰🇿. Her name means "hope".

She is the first tiger to enter the wild there since 1948.

The photos travelled fast. The timeline behind them is slower:

1948: the last confirmed tiger in Kazakhstan.
2018: the country creates the Ile-Balkhash reserve, 450,000 hectares, and starts restoring the prey that tigers need.
2026: Umit walks out.

Eight years of habitat work for one release. Climate progress runs on the same clock, and two numbers from this summer show it.

🇮🇳 passed a milestone on that same date. As of 31 July, the country counted more than 300 GW of non-fossil power capacity, solar alone close to 165 GW. That is over 60% of its target for 2030, built through years of auctions, grid investment and policy.

🇧🇷 reported the other kind of progress. Amazon deforestation alerts fell 37% in the 12 months to July, the lowest since the current satellite series began in 2015. Countries agreed at COP28 to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, a step the UNFCCC says would cut about 14% of global emissions.

None of this happens by accident. It takes targets, finance, monitoring and rules, which is what governments will negotiate at the Biodiversity COP, in Yerevan from 19 October, and at the Climate COP, in Antalya from 9 November.

Until Sunday 4 October, use the COPREADY discount code for 20% off your official UNITAR certificate. Start learning how to play your part in these important discussions and develop skills to excel in sustainability.

👉 https://unccelearn.org/

*D

24/09/2026

24/09/2026

23/09/2026

🚨Special offer alert🚨

How do almost 200 countries agree on a single decision? At the UN climate talks, they do it by consensus. No vote, no majority, just one text that nobody blocks.

This autumn brings two of these meetings. The UN Biodiversity Conference opens in Yerevan on 19 October with the first global review of the 23 biodiversity targets set for 2030. The UN Climate Change Conference follows in Antalya on 9 November, with a strong focus on putting commitments into practice.

So here is our challenge. In the next 12 days, learn enough to answer three questions:

🔵 How do almost 200 countries agree on a single decision?
🔵 Where do nature and climate meet?
🔵 Who pays for environmental action?

From today until 4 October, the code COPREADY gives you 20% off your UNITAR certificate for you to follow both conferences with confidence.

Pick the perfect course for you: https://unccelearn.org/courses/?language=en

*DCOP17

07/09/2026

📋 You have one budget line and three requests on your desk.

A coastal district wants a seawall. The agriculture ministry wants drought-resistant seed for a region where the rains have shifted. The health ministry wants two hospitals retrofitted before the next flood season.

All three are justified. All three are urgent. You can fully fund one.

That trade-off is the heart of a National Adaptation Plan, the instrument countries use to decide what gets protected first, in what order, and with whose money.

Mastering National Adaptation Plans: from Start to Finish on UN CC:Learn walks through the full process in three modules: developing a NAP, implementing and reviewing it, and the part where most plans stall: financing it, from national budgets to international climate funds.

For the government officials, sector specialists, and technical experts doing this work — and for anyone who wants to understand how a country actually prepares for what's already arriving.

📍 Self-paced · ~3 hours · English & French
👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=141

This course offers digital certification. The National Adaptation Plan (NAPs) process was established under the Cancun Adaptation Framework (2010) in order to prepare countries for addressing climate risk in the medium term. The main objectives of the NAPs are to reduce vulnerability to climate chan...

02/09/2026

⚖️ In April 2024, a group of Swiss women in their seventies won a case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Their argument wasn't about emissions targets or degrees of warming. It was simpler: their government's weak climate action had failed to protect their health — and that failure violated their rights.

The court agreed. In that moment, climate stopped being only a matter of ambition and became a matter of obligation.

That shift is the subject of An Introduction to Climate Change and Human Rights on UN CC:Learn. Across seven modules it traces how climate impacts translate into rights — to food, water, shelter, health, life itself — how those rights entered climate negotiations and agreements, who carries the heaviest burden, and how courtrooms are becoming a place where duty-bearers are held to account.

For policymakers, lawyers, activists and students — and for anyone who has noticed that "ambition" and "obligation" are not the same word.

📍 Self-paced · ~3.5 hours · English
👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=136

Developed by the Paris Committee on Capacity-building with United Nations Human Rights and the UN Climate Change , funded by BMZ through GIZ.

This course offers digital certification. This course addresses how human rights obligations require the international community to take more ambitious action to mitigate emissions, to support adaptation that benefits persons, groups and peoples in vulnerable situations, and to address loss and dama...

01/09/2026

💰 Every national budget is a climate document. It just doesn't say so on the cover.

Taxes, subsidies, and public spending decide which fuels stay cheap, which industries expand, and which costs get quietly passed to everyone else. Long before any climate target is set, the tax code has already made its own choices.

The Green Fiscal Policy e-course is about reading — and rewriting — those choices. Five lessons of about 20 minutes each cover why fiscal policy is one of the most powerful climate levers governments hold, which instruments actually work, how reform survives contact with the real policy cycle, and what that looks like in energy, transport, and waste.

Written for people in government, business, and civil society. Or anyone who's ever wondered why the greener option so often costs more, and what it would take to change that.

📍 Self-paced · ~2 hours · English
👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=112

Developed under United Nations Partnership for Action on Green Economy bringing together UN Environment Programme International Labour Organization United Nations Development Programme - UNDP UNIDO - United Nations Industrial Development Organization and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

This course offers digital certification. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many fragilities of our economies and deepened existing inequalities and imbalances. Green fiscal policies in particular can play a key role in countries’ recovery efforts by removing inefficiencies in public expenditures and ...