About the course
To meet the United Nations’ environmental commitments, the engagement of every UN personnel member is key to success. With the proliferation of entity-specific environmental management systems and the need to communicate about organizational efforts in Greening the Blue, several UN entities expressed the need to equip personnel with a thorough grasp of what environmental sustainability means, why it is important and the role each person can play in reducing the UN’s carbon footprint.
Greening the Blue Tutorial was launched in 2014 by the United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Development Programme and the Issue Management Group on Environmental Sustainability Management to respond to these needs.
The Tutorial was updated during 2020 and 2021 to reflect the most recent global and UN system changes, to make the main characters gender-neutral and to align with the requirements for training for UN Staff identified in the Strategy for Sustainability Management in the United Nations System 2020 - 2030, Phase I.
By being open for use by all, the Tutorial also helps demonstrate the UN’s commitment to its environmental sustainability mission and provides advice to anyone outside the UN system wanting to learn how to reduce their workplace carbon emissions.
Estimated learning effort
The course is self-paced and takes approximately 1 hour to complete.
Methodology
The Tutorial is delivered as a one-hour animation, in which we follow two animated characters - Stick and Bean - on a typical workday, segmented into 10 modules. Each module represents a different activity. Activities include booking travel, taking a lunch break, travelling on ground transport, and arranging meetings.
The Tutorial is presented in a fun and light tone, with multiple opportunities for user interaction. It allows the user to explore the different decisions related to the environment that UN personnel face day-to-day and to understand how these can impact the environmental footprint of the organization.
Authors
This course was produced by UNPD and UNEP.