Climate Change and Governance (Social Science)
Social Science Specialization:
Climate Change and Governance
Climate risk governance occurs at multiple levels of government and includes private sector and civil society organizations.
Acute impacts of climate change and severe weather will be particularly intense in urban environments placing municipalities in a pivotal role for adaptation strategies. Municipal governments can be central agents of positive change for both carbon reduction and justice.
Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcomes After completing the Graduate Diploma in Climate Risk Assessment and Opportunity concentrating in the area of Climate Change and Governance, students will be able to:
Assess
societal causes, impacts and injustices of extreme weather and climate rise
Explain
the possibilities for mitigating the spatial and social inequalities of climate risk
Describe
the challenges associated with climate risk and energy transition communication
Assess
the variety of governance strategies for managing energy transitions and climate risk
Create
policy briefs and other climate risk-related communications to both technical and non-technical audience
Recommended Background
Undergraduate business degree or have previously taken a pre-Ivey business skills course
Area of Specialization Courses
Climate Change Governance (Faculty of Social Science)
In addition to the mandatory course, students are required to take 3 courses from within the Area of Specialization of their choice.
Course Offerings
Climate Risks and Energy Transition
Course Code: CRSOSCI 9010
One of the cornerstones of global greenhouse gas reduction is the transition of energy systems to more efficient, lower carbon, forms. The course will focus on both the supply of energy (i.e., renewable sources) and the demand (e.g., heating, transportation) for energy from a range of stakeholders including governments, the private sector, various publics including Indigenous communities, and individual households. A core objective of the course is to recognize that while the science continues to evolve (e.g., energy storage) several actions can be enacted now. Thus, we will engage both behavioural and critical approaches to highlight how efforts to effect change at the individual level are bound up in potentially antiquated organizational models and thinking. Students will be introduced to the concepts and frameworks that encourage e.g., more efficient organization of electricity grids (smart grids, distributed grids) along with the various political, social, and cultural challenges for to their adoption. Energy justice will be a guiding conceptual principle for understanding these energy transitions.
Governance and Climate Risk
Course Code: CRSOSCI 9009
Climate risk governance is multi-scalar and includes broad stakeholders like the private sector and civil society organizations. Acute impacts of climate change and severe weather will be particularly intense in urban environments placing municipalities in a pivotal role for adaptation strategies. They along with federal and provincial governments, can also be central agents of positive change for carbon reduction. The course will involve developing an understanding power and limitations of all levels to effect change. Students will learn about the governance as it directly relates to severe weather, energy use, and carbon reduction policies and concepts like adaptation and resilience. They will explore the role of federal carbon reduction targets and the central importance of official/master plans for municipal governance and the relatively recent rise of ancillary planning like community energy plans and climate adaptation plans. They will learn practical skills such as synthesizing literature and generating policy briefs. The course will help develop an understanding of how climate risk is not something that is governed in a single “department”, but crosscuts vertically within formal governments and horizontally across a wide array of stakeholders.be a guiding conceptual principle for understanding these energy transitions.
Climate Risk and Justice
Course Code: CRSOSCI 9008
This course provides an overview of key social scientific approaches to understanding climate risk and adaptation. A central theme of the course is the spatial, historical, and social unevenness of both the causes and impacts of climate change as well as efforts to mitigate harms from impacts like extreme climate and weather events (e.g., Indigenous communities). One overarching framework is the political economy of the Anthropocene, and a politics that can mitigate against ineffectual concessions while taking lead roles on real, positive change. Students will analyze disaster data along with case-studies of key climate impacts. Other themes include the challenge of changing cultural practices, ways of life, and patterns of behaviour. Students will be asked to explore the opportunities for, and challenges involved in, deploying climate mitigation and adaptation strategies that involve fundamental individual and societal changes to historical ways of life and being. Thus, the course underscores the multiple rationalities, beyond scientific ones, that are embedded in climate change minimization and impact mitigation strategies.
Get Started Today
Step 1
Browse the website to see what specialization would be the best fit for you.
