Climate Change is one of the greatest societal challenges of this century, as recently estimated by the nearly 1,000 experts interviewed for the World Risk Report. Urban areas are pivotal to global adaptation and mitigation efforts as cities are responsible for substantial amounts of greenhouse gases emissions and particularly vulnerable to climate hazards due to their high density of people, assets, and infrastructure. But how do cities currently perform? And, how can cities actually plan for successful climate change mitigation and adaptation?
In this year we look at two focal topics: 1) Mitigation: the 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Initiative of the EU; 2) Adaptation: how cities across the world can integrate indigenous knowledge/ information/ land processes into the (more) formal Local Climate Change Planning procedures?
This course shortly highlights the main processes and agreements of climate policy and governance at the global level (Paris Agreement, etc.) and then introduces in brief the theory and practice of Local Climate Change Planning (along the book: https://islandpress.org/books/local-climate-action-planning). Michael Boswell, the author of the book, will be part of our staff in this course this year).
Students will then choose to either work more deeply on mitigation or adaptation.
When choosing mitigation students will study the EU Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 Initiative (https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/newsroom/news/2022/05/05-06-2022-discover-the-100-cities-selected-for-the-cities-mission) and study related information on carbon neutrality in the two recently published IPCC reports. They will then work on how to achieve carbon neutrality through better planning & its implementation.
When choosing adaptation students will review indigenous knowledge literature including but limited to the two recently published IPCC reports & work on its integration with (more) formal western knowledge.
Students will choose 2 case studies to address their topic in the practical work.