UN CC:Learn

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...

02/09/2026

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 ...

28/08/2026

🏙️ Cities cover a small fraction of the planet's surface — yet they generate more than 70% of global CO₂ emissions.�

They're also where the damage lands first: heatwaves trapped between concrete, floods overwhelming drains built for another century, sea levels creeping toward homes and power stations.

That double role — biggest driver, most exposed — is what makes cities the most consequential place to act. And it's the subject of Cities and Climate Change from UN CC:Learn, taken by 42,000+ learners worldwide. Across six short lessons it covers how climate change hits urban areas, why cities contribute so much, and how planners can build adaptation and mitigation into transport, housing, energy, and water, with real examples of cities already doing it.

For planners and city officials, certainly. But also for anyone who lives in a city and wonders what it will feel like in twenty years.

📍 Short course · ~2 hours · English, Spanish & French
�👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=21

This course offers digital certification. Join over 42,000 learners worldwide who have already taken this insightful course on cities and climate change. Explore how urban areas are both affected by and contribute to climate change and discover the transformative role cities can play in building a g...

27/08/2026

🌍What does it actually take to scale climate finance?

Discover it on the free 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 e-course, built by UNITAR and UNDP's Climate Finance Network.

We've just added a 5th module — Scaling Climate-Smart Public Investment Management — to the course!

Swipe through 👉 to see what's inside all 5 modules.

✅ Free & self-paced
✅ UN digital certificate available
✅ Already reached 2.4k learners in 180+ countries

Whether you work in a finance ministry, the private sector, or civil society, this course breaks down how climate finance actually moves, from sources and instruments, to public budgets, to project delivery on the ground.

Supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

🔗 Learn more: https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=205&page=overview

26/08/2026

🌍 Every day between 2016 and 2021, weather-related disasters drove 20,000 children from their homes — 43 million in all.
(Source: UNICEF)

Nearly a billion more — almost half the world's children — are growing up in countries at extremely high climate risk. They didn't cause the crisis, but they're living its sharpest edge.

Children and Climate Change, from UN CC:Learn, puts them at the center of the story. Across five short lessons — already taken by 28,000+ learners worldwide — it shows how climate change shapes children's health, safety, and schooling, and how child-centered policies, resilient schools, and education can turn them from bystanders into agents of change.

Whether you teach, govern, build, or parent — this is for anyone with a stake in the world today's children will inherit.

📍 Short course · ~2 hours · English, Spanish, French & Vietnamese
👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=23

Built on UNICEF's data, including the Children's Climate Risk Index.

This course offers digital certification. Join over 28,000 learners worldwide who have already taken this eye-opening course on children and climate change. Discover how climate change affects children and youth, how to build their resilience, and how reducing greenhouse gas emissions benefits peopl...

25/08/2026

🌡️ A heatwave settles over the city. The local clinic fills with an elderly man fighting for breath, a dehydrated child, and a farmer who couldn't work the fields.

None of them will ever sit in a climate negotiation. Yet the decisions made in those rooms will shape whether wards like this overflow again next summer.

Climate change is projected to cause roughly 250,000 additional deaths a year between 2030 and 2050, and health still too often reaches the negotiating table as a footnote.

Climate Change Negotiations and Health, from UN CC:Learn, is built to change that. Across six lessons, it links the science of climate and health to the machinery of the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement, and the COPs, so the people who care about health can help shape what's decided.

For clinicians, negotiators, officials, and students alike — anyone who wants health to count in the climate conversation.

📍 Self-paced · English
👉 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=127

Developed with World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), & Climate Tracker, supported by the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

This course offers digital certification. The course features key information on climate change and its impacts on human health, provides an overview of the climate change negotiations so far, and considers entry points to address health issues and priorities within climate change negotiations and p...

14/08/2026

Follow a single mango from an orchard in Kenya's Rift Valley to a market stall in Nairobi. 🌍

How it's grown, packed, sold, eaten — and what's left to rot — touches soil, water, energy, livelihoods, and climate. Every step is a choice about how a continent consumes and produces.

That's the lens of Sustainable Consumption and Production in Africa, a self-paced course that traces sustainable consumption and production across five modules, from the factory floor to the shopping basket. It moves from cleaner production and climate-smart farming to eco-labelling, greener cities, and the policies and consumer choices that turn intention into lasting change.

The setting is Africa, but the lessons travel anywhere consumption meets production, for anyone working to change how we make, buy, and use things.

📍 Self-paced and available in English & French�👇
https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=88&page=overview

UN Environment Programme United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

13/08/2026

🌍 A fisher hauls in her nets at dawn. The catch is smaller than last year — and smaller than the year before.

Is that a poverty problem? An environmental one? A climate one?

The honest answer is all three, at once. As the mangroves are cleared and the coastline erodes, her catch shrinks and her income falls. As her income falls, she has little choice but to fish harder. The threads won't pull apart — yet we keep writing policies as if they do.

That knot is the whole subject of Introduction to Sustainable Development in Practice e-course. Its premise is simple: you can't solve poverty, environment, and climate in separate rooms. Across four modules and under two hours, you'll learn to see the connections — and find the openings where integrated policy can change the outcome.

You'll come away able to:
→ Read the poverty–environment nexus for what it really is
→ Spot the global and local forces pushing toward integration
→ Weigh the real trade-offs of tackling these issues together
→ Recognise where in the policy process integration takes hold

Grounded in real cases from more than 10 countries, and made for the policy staff, practitioners, and change-makers who'd rather untie the whole knot than tug at one thread.

👉 Start here: https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=170

11/08/2026

💡 Local communities aren't only on the front line of climate change, they're on the front line of the solution.

When local governments have the finance and the tools, adaptation gets real: climate risk built into local plans and budgets, and resilience delivered where people actually live. That's the idea behind the Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) facility — channelling climate finance directly to local authorities in developing countries, including least developed countries, small island states and across Africa, and embedding adaptation into local planning and budgeting in a participatory, gender-sensitive way. And local action goes even further when it's connected to the bigger picture: the decisions shaped in international negotiating rooms under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

"International Climate Change Negotiations: Leveraging LoCAL Experience" on the UN CC:Learn platform connects the two. It builds a solid understanding of how climate negotiations actually work with a clear focus on adaptation. And it goes further than most: a full module on the fundamentals of negotiation: the strategies and tactics that make delegates effective in the room.

⏱️ Self-paced across 3 modules — around 3.5 hours — built around the schedule of full-time working professionals, with interactive lessons and a real-world case study on financing local adaptation. You'll come away able to:

✅ Explain how the UNFCCC provides a framework for international cooperation on climate change
✅ Understand the roles of its governance bodies and negotiating groups
✅ Explore the financial mechanisms available under the UNFCCC
✅ Examine key adaptation milestones — including the Paris Agreement and its non-market mechanisms
✅ Build practical negotiation skills and techniques for international climate conferences

Whether you're a national negotiator finding your feet, a practitioner who wants to understand the UNFCCC process, or simply curious about how countries shape climate outcomes, this course turns a complex system into something you can navigate — and influence.

Available in English and French, with a UN digital certificate on completion. Start here 👇

📚 https://unccelearn.org/course/view.php?id=159&page=overview