Climate Action and Water Security in Bolivia

• Specialists from CATIE's Watershed and Water Security Unit participated in the design and development of a MOOC course.

January 24, 2023. This year the MOOC course "Climate Action and Water Security in Practice" opens in Bolivia and will be available on UNDP's CAp-Net platform. The course is oriented to capacity development in the framework of climate action and water security, focused on the application of tools for the development of investment programs and projects at the sub national level.

CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) participates as a partner in the course through the collaboration of Ney Ríos and William Watler, specialists of the Watershed and Water Security Unit, who cooperated in its design and development.

The course has the participation of prestigious Bolivian universities, institutes, research centers and is financed by the German Cooperation, with the technical supervision of GIZ.

MOOC is the acronym for Massive Online Open Courses (or Massive Open Online Courses), that is to say, it is a distance learning course, accessible via the Internet, to which anyone can sign up and there is no limit to the number of participants.

In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings and quizzes, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, teachers and teaching assistants.

Information and registration here: Acción Climática y Seguridad Hídrica en la Práctica - Cap-Net

About the course

The course aims to develop an innovative virtual training offer in support of water-environmental management, promoting capacity building and the development of tools and solutions to improve water security in watersheds, and the implementation of integrated natural resource management approaches, taking into account climate change

It is aimed at public officials (VRHyR, governorates and municipalities), independent professionals (consultants) and graduate students; involved (or interested in getting involved) in planning and elaboration processes of investment projects within the framework of climate action and water security.

The course does not require participants to have prior knowledge of climate change and water security, although prior knowledge and/or experience in general planning and public investment project development procedures would be an asset.

Due to the complexity of these processes, the actors involved are expected to develop new knowledge and capacities to acquire and interpret information of different nature, as well as the capacity to analyze and understand different multidimensional problems and their respective dynamics. Likewise, it is required to develop a proactive and collaborative work attitude to try to generate changes at different levels of development and implementation of socio-environmental policies in relation to climate action and water security.

It is an online self-study course, where the learning activities comprise a total of 40 academic hours: 20 hours of virtual activities and 20 hours of individual study, considering a dedication of 5 hours/week, the MOOC would have a duration of 8 weeks.