April 2021, Geneva, Switzerland - UNEP, UNSIAP and UNITAR are delighted to announce a new self-paced e-learning course – “Environmental SDG indicators”. Targeted primarily towards National Statistical Offices, Ministries of Environment, civil servants, and other stakeholders that support broader national sustainable development monitoring and decision making. The course comprises 10 individual modules, that provide an overview of all 25 SDG indicators under UNEP custodianship, due to vast thematic knowledge, each module can be regarded as a stand-alone module and taken individually.

This course is the culmination of various environmental concerns and international engagements. In September 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit adopted an international framework to guide development efforts, entitled 'Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development'. The Agenda is built around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), divided into 169 targets, which are informed by 244 Indicators. The importance of improving the availability of and access to data and statistics related to the environment was recognized through the adoption of a wide range of environmental SDG targets and indicators. Therefore, this course addresses this gap and provides an overview of the importance of monitoring the environmental dimension of development, the linkage with existing statistical frameworks (FDES and SEEA) and how to use environment statistics in evidence-based decision-making processes.

After the course, participants will be well acquainted with key concepts relevant for environmental monitoring and SDG indicators; understand how respective environmental indicators are computed, and discuss key challenges countries face in compiling these indicators and actions that can be taken to address them. Each module includes an interactive presentation complemented by a set of practice quizzes, followed by an objective graded quiz to be taken after completing the lesson to assess the knowledge and skills acquired. Participants meeting the criteria above will receive a certificate of completion for an individual module. Upon completion of quizzes of all ten modules, a participant will be provided with a certificate of completion for the whole course.

Learn more about the course here: https://bit.ly/EnvSDGs.