Module Overview:
Climate change is an issue of urgent global concern. For decades, the challenge was discussed and debated in academia and the international policy arena as a looming threat to the stability of the wellbeing of human societies, the sustainability food systems and the maintenance of living standards around the world, among other things. In recent decades, however, due largely to international failures to sufficiently arrest its progress, the effects of climate change have noticeably accelerated, erupting in different ways around the world and gradually, but continuously, increasing global temperature averages.
This module problematizes climate change. It identifies the actors, systems and power structures that resist and/or facilitate its address, while charting the major attempts of the international political system to create norms, regimes, rules and institutions to govern it in the last half century. Despite a dominant theoretical reliance on poststructuralism, the module draws on a variety of theoretical and policy insights while inviting students to engage with how the problem of climate change underlies different issues of global concern, especially in terms of conflict and security. Students will be challenged to demonstrate how climate change intersects with a particular security and/or conflict related issue of social, economic or political concern, while demonstrating how climate change, in turn, exacerbates or ameliorates this concern.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
At the close of this module, students should:
1. Understand the emergence and intractability of the problem of climate change
2. Develop familiarity with varied theoretical and policy approaches that engage with the problem
3. Understand climate change related issues as related to or co-constitutive of other global challenges rather than as primarily an externality
4. Formulate policy responses sensitive to climate change related concerns
Climate change is an issue of urgent global concern. For decades, the challenge was discussed and debated in academia and the international policy arena as a looming threat to the stability of the wellbeing of human societies, the sustainability food systems and the maintenance of living standards around the world, among other things. In recent decades, however, due largely to international failures to sufficiently arrest its progress, the effects of climate change have noticeably accelerated, erupting in different ways around the world and gradually, but continuously, increasing global temperature averages.
This module problematizes climate change. It identifies the actors, systems and power structures that resist and/or facilitate its address, while charting the major attempts of the international political system to create norms, regimes, rules and institutions to govern it in the last half century. Despite a dominant theoretical reliance on poststructuralism, the module draws on a variety of theoretical and policy insights while inviting students to engage with how the problem of climate change underlies different issues of global concern, especially in terms of conflict and security. Students will be challenged to demonstrate how climate change intersects with a particular security and/or conflict related issue of social, economic or political concern, while demonstrating how climate change, in turn, exacerbates or ameliorates this concern.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
At the close of this module, students should:
1. Understand the emergence and intractability of the problem of climate change
2. Develop familiarity with varied theoretical and policy approaches that engage with the problem
3. Understand climate change related issues as related to or co-constitutive of other global challenges rather than as primarily an externality
4. Formulate policy responses sensitive to climate change related concerns
Course Type: 2023-2024 Modules
Shared Course: No
Feeder Course: No