It is a frightening prospect – that all life on Earth must either adapt or be doomed. This course is about landscape degradation – a global and wicked problem that is contributing to the dooming prospect of depletion of Earth’s finite resources. But this course is also about the solutions to this problem – business driven landscape restoration, and the skills that you will need in order to play part in reversing this development.
So rather than leaving you powerless, it is our hope that you learn how you can be part of the solution to making sure that Planet Earth still provides a safe and habitable home for future generation.
We must act big and we must act now.
With this course, Landscape Restoration for Sustainable Development: A Business Approach, we want to pass valuable knowledge on to you and teach you useful skills that you can apply in your professional life, and that will enable you to tackle the issue of landscape degradation and restoration. The issue is urgent, so let’s dive right into it!
Practical information
RSM’s seven-week MOOC Landscape Restoration for Sustainable Development: a Business Approach in is taught in English (English subtitles are also available in the video sections). There is no fee to participate in the programme. Further details about the syllabus and start dates are available through Coursera, a provider of online classes from more than 120 top universities and educational organisations.
Learning objectives
During this online course, you will spend two to four hours per week learning how to:
- Understand the importance of landscapes and the scale of degradation in the world
- Interpret land use change and land degradation in the context of the so-called planetary boundaries
- Demonstrate the potential for large-scale landscape restoration
- Identify the role that the private sector can play
- Understand the importance of ecosystems for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Understand how the economic value of land is assessed
- Identify the business risk of landscape degradation
- Assess rewarding opportunities for sustainable business
- Explore tools used by companies to understand and value their impact and dependency on ecosystem services
- Understand and discuss the economics of land management from a holistic perspective
- Approach landscape degradation as a wicked problem
- Distinguish between so-called coalition of the willing and coalition of the needed
- Develop and analyse business models using the business model canvas tool
- Discuss how partnerships can be integrated into a business model
- Understand the sustainable business model innovation process