Demystifying Environmental and Sustainability Data for Effective Communication in the 21st Century

Course date January 31 to February 14, 2024 / Last date to Apply 28th Jan 24

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi. CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of development that is both sustainable and equitable. The scenario today demands using knowledge to bring about change. In other words, working India’s democracy. This is what we aim to do.The challenge, we see, is two-pronged. On the one hand, millions live within a biomass based subsistence economy, at the margins of survival. The environment is their only natural asset. But a degraded environment means stress on land, water and forest resources for survival. It means increasing destitution and poverty. Here, opportunity to bring about change is enormous.But it will need a commitment to reform – structural reform- in the way we do business with local communities. On the other hand, rapid industrialization is throwing up new problems: growing toxification and a costly disease burden. The answers will be in reinventing the growth model of the Western world for ourselves, so that we can leapfrog technology choices and find new ways of building wealth that will not cost us the earth. Our aim is to raise these concerns, participate in seeking answers and in pushing for answers, transforming these into policy and so practice. We do this through our research and by communicating our understanding through our publications. We call this knowledge-based activism. We hope we will make a difference.

“There is drama in numbers, especially when these numbers give you a trend — are things getting better or worse. It is even more powerful when you can use the trend to understand the crisis, the challenge and the opportunity; and take appropriate actions.”
– Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment; Member of the COP28 UAE Advisory Committee.

Data is not just numbers. It is critical for research communication, advocacy and decision-making. Data and the maps on climate change, air pollution, water, agriculture, urbanisation and economy, when put together, paint a larger picture of the situation in terms of sustainability and development.

So, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), one of South Asia’s leading think tanks on the politics of development, environment and climate change, invites you to join its Global Online Certificate Training, which focuses specifically on: understanding data, analyzing it, and visualising it to tell climate change and development stories to different stakeholders for action.

With only seven years to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change poses an existential threat to these goals and humanity as a whole. So the course will focus on use of data related to climate change, extreme weather events and sustainability. It will briefly cover outcomes of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) too, held from 30 November to 12 December, 2023 at Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to analyse and unravel what the numbers really say on environment and development. They will be able to create visually impactful stories, maps and dashboards using state-of-the-art visualisation tools for interactive communication and collaterals, for different stakeholders to trigger actions—at regional and global level.

COURSE DATE January 31 to February 14, 2024

COURSE PLATFORM Zoom and Moodle

COURSE DURATION 15 hours

COURSE FEE
Rs 3,500 for Indian participants
US $100 for Global participants

Fees once paid are not returnable/refundable or transferable

CSE and AAETI will award Certificates of Participation to all those who attend and complete the course.

What will you learn?

Data Sourcing: Learn how and where to research for relevant data on environment and sustainability. You will learn to find different data sets, clean, transform and make them ready for analysis using Excel and Microsoft PowerBI.
Data Analysis and Modelling to make data meaningful: Learn skills required to process data and create relationships between different data sets on environment and development (includes SDGs).
Data Visualisation: Understand the basic concepts of visualisation and learn to visualise data using Data wrapper, and Microsoft PowerBI.
Data Dashboard: Learn to create interactive dashboards showing relationships between different data sets on the environment and development.
Report Writing: Develop skills to process, visualise, and integrate environmental data into simple, compelling and informative ‘reports, articles and stories’ for print and web.

Who can attend?

Professionals, government officials and policymakers
Academia: Faculty and researchers, and students associated with climate and sustainable development
Researchers and writers on environment and development
National and international civil society groups, NGOs, climate activists and advocates
Industries: Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)/CSR officers, Public relations/Communication officers
Data managers and statisticians interested in improving communication skills
Anyone else interested in the subject

Course structure

The self-paced online programme will have video lectures, presentations, tutorials, quizzes and assignments. Participants will also get an opportunity to work on an in-depth project of their choice.

The programme will also have three live interactive sessions for meeting the trainers and fellow participants.

The programme has been designed in such a way that it can be completed along with a regular job or study.

The course is broken down into four modules

Module 1: Introduction to state of environment, the sustainable development goals (SDGs), trends and significance of data for effective communication and informed decision making
Module 2: Finding the right data on environment and development for in-depth research
Module 3: Data processing and analysis to make data meaningful
Module 4: Creating interactive data visualizations, maps and dashboards

Key requirements

All participants would require:

A computer/laptop
A high-speed internet connection

COURSE DIRECTOR

Kiran Pandey
Programme director
Information Management, CSE
Email: kiran@cseindia.org
Phone: +91-9871215338

COURSE COORDINATOR

Susan Chacko
Senior Manager
Information Management, CSE
Email: susan@cseindia.org
Phone: +91-9958387577

Click here to know more and APPLY