North West University NWU Centre for Environmental Management

North West University Centre for Environmental Management, The Centre for Environmental Management (CEM) is approved by the North-West University (NWU) as a decentralised short learning-programme provider of potentially credit-bearing, short teaching and learning services. Knowledge is generated by means of applied research in environmental management, law and related fields, as well as by means of problem-solving and research commissions received from both the public and the private sectors.

The CEM functions as one of the four centres of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University and it is managed in terms of the NWU’s policies, procedures and principles. The NWU established the Environmental Management Unit (EMU) in 1996 to co-ordinate and formalise its short-course portfolio and some ad hoc applied research programmes in environmental management that had been presented and conducted since 1986. The EMU evolved into the current CEM. The EMU was established in response to requests from the private sector to establish a knowledge generation and dissemination, as well solution finding entity in environmental management and law that was located in and relevant to the South African and African contexts.