Governing Climate Change: Theory and Practice

About

We will examine different approaches for coping with climate change: international agreements, market-based solutions, civil-society and corporate actions.

We are in the middle of a climate breakdown. Climate change is the most pressing environmental challenge facing humankind. Yet despite scientific consensus on its main cause – human activities – politicians and governments still lack the will and ambition to tackle the crisis effectively. Instead we see cities, companies and NGOs responding. They have become the driving forces behind innovative tools for behavioral change, creating a complex alternative web of institutions, instruments and actors seeking to govern climate change at the global level. However, these bottom-up initiatives are often criticized as green-washing while at the same time fossil fuel interests control the political process.

In this course you examine different approaches to coping with climate change, from international agreements to climate actions by companies, cities and individual citizens. Each week, we delve into different topics and challenges, ranging from the history of climate change governance, to how we adapt to perhaps irreversible climate-induced effects in an equitable way. We also critically engage with questions around responsibility and accountability for and in the climate crisis.

Course leader

Philip Pattberg

Target group

Master or PhD students and professionals with an interest in climate action and policy. Our courses are multi-disciplinary and therefore are open to students and professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds.

Course aim

By the end of this course, students will:

Understand how global climate governance has changed over the past 40 years and where it might take us in the future
Critically examine and assess current climate governance in terms of its emergence, effectiveness and efficiency, and be able to formulate reasoned opinions about contested concepts like fairness, legitimacy, equity and justice
Adequately communicate and debate about climate change issues
Understand practical local and global solutions to climate change, partly based on in-person observations of solutions applied in the Netherlands.

Fee info