Umweltbundesamt
The “UNEP/UNESCO/BMUV International Postgraduate Training Programme on Environmental Management for Developing and Emerging Countries” offers each year a long and several short courses on environmental management for specialists and managers from developing and emerging countries.
As well as the Federal Environment Agency, the following institutions provide substantive input to the programme:
The objective of the training programme is to impart knowledge and raise awareness of global environmental processes and related problems and of sustainable methods of managing resources. The courses seek to improve, science-based, the participants’ ability to recognize global interlinkages and to act in an interdisciplinary and integrated way. Many participants come from major environmental institutions in developing and emerging countries in Asia, Africa, America and Europe. They therefore have work experience and expertise as an important basis for targeted further training. The training programme gives participants the skills they need to fulfil relevant tasks in environmental policy, administration and science in their home countries in the future, and offers them the opportunity to better contribute to the formulation and implementation of their respective national environmental policies. Overall, the training programme thus contributes to personal and institutional capacity building - a key prerequisite for sustainable development - in developing and emerging countries.
The six-month course on integrated environment management covers a broad range of topics and is designed, in particular, to promote interdisciplinary thinking and working. As well as this course, there are usually three separate short courses, each about four weeks in duration, which deal with specific topics of particular concern for developing and emerging countries (e.g. water, soil, waste, biodiversity, mobility, urbanization, land use, energy). The topics of these short courses vary from year to year.
The teaching and working language is English.
The Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) is in charge of preparing and implementing the courses. CIPSEM was founded in 1977 in the former GDR (East Germany), with international support from UNESCO and UNEP. Since 1990, CIPSEM’s training programme has been financed by the German Federal Environment Ministry and TU Dresden as a contribution to the United Nations Environment Programme. A steering committee composed of representatives of UNEP, UNESCO, BMUV, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and TU Dresden decides on the number of courses for the next year and their topics, and selects the participants for the coming course period.
The courses are taught by professors and lecturers from different faculties of TU Dresden, experts from German governmental and non-governmental organizations working in the environment field, industry representatives, and experts from abroad. They also include excursions to biosphere reserves, industrial plants and administrations. These visits help to illustrate environmental problems and demonstrate successful solutions. Particular importance is attached to the exchange of experience between participants and to the feasibility of implementing solutions in developing and emerging countries.
The new course programmes is published on the CIPSEM website each year in January and is also disseminated in developing and emerging countries by the German embassies to these countries. Online application is possible.
The UBA’s motto, For our environment (“Für Mensch und Umwelt”), sums up our mission pretty well, we feel. In this video we give an insight into our work.
