Sustainability Courses

Short Tutorials and Courses (~hours to days)

✅ Food EDU

Food EDU online courses and trainings are available on the American Heart Association’s Professional Education Hub. Food EDU is facilitated by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT as co-secretariats of the Periodic Table of Food Initiative.

In addition to courses, the Food EDU page under the Periodic Table of Food Initiative provides an open-access educational platform empowering leaders across the globe to advance human and planetary health.

a networking hub and the Good Food Fellows program, Food EDU provides educational and professional development opportunities for scientists, policymakers, and food and health practitioners worldwide. Food EDU is building the capacity of scientific communities, and bridging gaps between research innovation and educational opportunities worldwide.

✅ FAO e-learning Academy

Nutrition and Food Systems: Pathways to Sustainable and Healthy Diets (free) – This is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that was delivered in two editions between September 2021 and June 2022 in English and French. The overall objective of this course was to apply a systems-thinking approach to issues of food security and nutrition, thus contributing to a transformation of food systems towards more sustainable, equitable and healthy diets. This MOOC is made available in order to share the content and associated resources that were specifically developed for it by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Agreenium (Institut Agro Montpellier et Cirad), and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Université Virtuelle Environnement et Développement Durable (UVED).

Sustainable Food Systems: There are 23 courses available on the FAO e-learning Academy under the theme of Sustainable Food Systems:

1. Tropical Agriculture Platform
2. Course 3: Gender-Responsive budgeting for agriculture and climate policies
3. Course 2: Building equitable and inclusive agrifood systems
4. Course 1: Addressing gender equality in climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture
5. Introduction: Achieving gender equality in climate change and agrifood systems
6. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Field experts
7. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Managers
8. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Introduction
9. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Practitioners
10. Agrifood system pathways to healthy diets: A stepwise approach
11. Transforming dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral systems
12. Sustainable food systems: Concept and framework
13. Sustainable food systems: Operationalizing the approach
14. Sustainable food systems: An introduction
15. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Reform
16. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Analysis
17. Developing gender-sensitive value chains
18. Sustainable Food Value Chains for Nutrition
19. SDG Indicator 2.4.1 – Sustainable Agriculture
20. SDG Indicators 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 – Labour productivity and income of small-scale food producersntals
21. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Fundamentals
22. Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems
23. Building a common vision for sustainable food and agriculture

✅ Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet (free)

Handout for Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet Download PDF

Learn to achieve a HEALTHY PLATE and a HEALTHY PLANET and help your clients to do the same. Created by Gaples Institute & Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Nutrition.

Even though one is geared toward ‘clinicians’ it is useful for anyone in healthcare who is new to the topic, and the other tools can be used with any client.

This 10-minute interactive learning experience will guide you toward simple dietary shifts that benefit people and the planet. It reflects the work of 37 leading health and climate scientists from 16 countries, using the best available evidence for optimal health.

✅ United Nations Climate Change E-Learn (mixed free & paid)

Browse the United Nations Climate Change e-learn courses: these are a valuable resource for those looking to deepen their knowledge around specific climate change, sustainability and nutrition topics.

These web-based short courses and tutorials are free of charge and range in length from 30 minutes to 12 hours. There is also a digital certification system where a nominal fee is charged for accessing certificates of completion, while all course content will remain free of charge.

They are self paced, some with multiple language options, and systematically cover topics such as Sustainable Diet, Human Health and Climate Change, Water, Gender and Environment, and Introduction to Sustainable Finance. We suggest the following as good places to start:

✅ Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) Academy (mixed free & paid)

The Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) Academy is an online learning platform that makes nutrition education accessible to everyone. Nutrition has great power to influence health but, at the same time, nutrition education is often neglected in medical school curricula. PAN is on a mission to change this imbalance by offering nutritional science knowledge in the form of fun and engaging video lessons to medical students, physicians and healthcare professionals. With this know-how, they can become even better at supporting patients to make more informed food choices for their health.

PAN’s educational offerings are not only for medical professionals. Just about anyone interested in learning how healthy, whole food plant-based nutrition can save lives, treat and prevent the most deadly non-communicable diseases and mitigate climate change is invited to take the courses. There are many free courses as well as courses that are for paid members-only.

Longer Courses (~weeks)

✅ Class Central (Course fees for Certificate)

Browse Class Central for more in depth distance courses offered as MOOCS (massive open online courses) from various universities around the world. This is a database of free online courses run by a small company with a mission to make education accessible. The listing contains 100+ courses relating to the UN SDGs, several of which are of direct relevance to health and sustainability. Details vary by course but most run for 4-8 weeks and have instructors who provide feedback. Some are not accessible from all geographic regions, and while auditing is generally free, payment is required to receive an official certification. We suggest the following as good places to start.

Credit Courses

The following distance education courses offer credit.

✅ Sustainable Nutrition CAS – Bern University of Applied Sciences (2023 Aug) (German)

A sustainable food system should give the entire world population access to safe and needs-based nutrition with fairly produced food produced taking into account planetary boundaries. This requires nutritionists who help shape the transformation of the nutrition system. The CAS Sustainable Nutrition looks at global perspectives and Swiss contexts, and enables you to derive concrete nutritional recommendations for a healthy and sustainable diet in Switzerland. For this purpose, exemplary challenges are deepened and solutions are discussed that you can network with your traditional professional field or carry into new occupational fields.

The target audiences for this course are nutritionists, food scientists, and other actors in the Swiss food system with a tertiary degree and nutrition background.

• The course will be held: November 2023 to June 2024
  • Seven two-day blocks each on Fridays/Saturdays (one block per month)
  • Lesson times: usually from 9.15 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.
• Provides 12 ECTS credits, with a workload of 360 hours (incl. study days).
• Cost: 5,800 CHF
• Location: Bern campus

✅ EFAD Sustainability in Dietetics (FREE learning modules at your own pace)

The European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) has built this course upon dietitians’ voices and the rationale that it would be useful for dietitians to increase knowledge and have practical materials and resources to embed sustainability in their dietetic practice. In our modern world, we all need to contribute to reducing the global impact of climate change and consider social and economic aspects related to food choice and intake. Dietitians have a role in promoting sustainable and healthy diets.

Over the four modules of self-directed learning, 16 leading experts explain some of the complex concepts of sustainability and provide tools to translate knowledge into practice via lectures, case studies, sustainable meals and recipes as well as additional links and resources.

MODULE 1: Sustainable Food Systems and Diets
MODULE 2: Strategies towards Sustainable Diets
MODULE 3: The Food Cycle
MODULE 4: Sustainability in Dietetic Practice

Click on this link to access the EFAD Sustainability in Dietetics course that concludes with an assessment and a certificate with associated 7 EFAD points.

✅ Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (Paid Courses)

Several food systems-related courses are offered by the Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, which provides a dedicated portal for professional education.

Nutritionists and dietitians will find significant value in WUR’s flexible, science-driven programs that connect cutting-edge research on sustainable food systems, preventive health, healthy aging, and agrifood transitions to practical applications in clinical and community settings. These offerings enable professionals to strengthen evidence-based counseling on planetary health diets, nutrition policy, and systems-level interventions.

Key programs include executive education for leadership in food system transformation, online masters and short courses (ranging from 2 days to 2 years) focused on health and sustainability, in-house customized training for organizations, and thematic areas such as sustainable husbandry and biobased value chains.

✅ DIPLOMA IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD: FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS (paid online course, in Spanish)

The Diploma in Sustainable Food: For a Planet in Crisis is an e-learning course offered in Spanish by the University of Chile, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Nutrition.

Sustainable nutrition and food arise as a response to the planetary crisis as a result of climate change that threatens the nutritional food security of the population. Addressing this requires an intersectoral and transdisciplinary approach that encompasses food systems, human nutrition, and planetary health.

The global interest in sustainable nutrition and food is inserted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has defined sustainable diets as those that have a low environmental impact and contribute to food and nutritional security and a healthy life for present and future generations.

The Department of Nutrition (DNUT) is ideal for issuing this diploma, since the academic team has experience from different axes that are interrelated to seek answers to a complex problem.

The course targets graduates or professionals from careers related to health disciplines, nutrition, food, innovation, agronomy, environment, and others, who want to acquire knowledge and tools that complement their disciplinary area, in the context of nutrition and sustainable food.

• Module 1: The current global food and health crisis.
• Module 2: Food systems and their impact on nutritional food security.
• Module 3: Food and the food industry: Impact on health and sustainability.
• Module 4: Sustainable food for adequate nutrition in health and disease.
• Module 5: Sustainable food systems applied to public health.

Register here: https://medichi.uchile.cl/diploma-alimentacion-sostenible/