F1ES 4420 - Climate Adaptation: from concepts to collective action

This course deepens a process-based understanding of adaptation and offers a coherent framework for drawing out the implications of climate impacts across multiple scales.

We begin by introducing core IPCC concepts and key tools from the adaptation and risk-management toolbox such as climate services and insurance that help frame how societies anticipate and respond to climate variability. Each subsequent session explores a major adaptation challenge through concrete examples: planning for floods and crisis management; coastal adaptation; managing water scarcity; adapting infrastructure to increasing climate variability; and using strategic foresight to support vulnerable sectors such as tourism, agriculture, and the private sector. The course concludes with the examination of national adaptation strategies, which place these sectoral and territorial challenges into perspective and highlight the governance and policy dimensions of long-term planning.

Adopting a vulnerability-based approach, we will assess the consequences of climate change, explore how to design adaptation pathways collectively, and discuss the limits of adaptation.

Learning Outcomes

• Mobilize theoretical and empirical knowledge to address the challenges of climate change adaptation in a variety of contexts;
• Apply a pragmatist and multi-dimensional approach to analyze situations of vulnerability;
• Design an adaptation process tailored to a specific context;
• Discuss and critically assess adaptation options;
• Compare adaptation pathways using multiple criteria.

Professional Skills

Ability to analyze complex situations, propose processes to clarify and engage with this complexity, and present findings in formats adapted to various decision-making contexts (decision briefs, video capsules, etc.).

Pedagogical and feedback format

• A class discussion at the midpoint will discuss the progress of the course and student work.
• First feedback will be made in session, and detailed written feedback will be provided on video capsules and discussion reports within two weeks of their presentation.
• Interactions may take place during the preparation of the final assessment and a general appreciation will be sent by email in the weeks following the end of the course

Assessment

• 5’ individual video/audio capsule: through the semester, in the form of a clip presenting an existing adaptation story (i.e. a policy, project, program) in relation to the topic of the session: 35% (possibility to work in pairs to detail one example in 10’);
• Discussion hosting and recap: each week, students will host group-discussion, share the output to the class and send within a week a brief recap (1 to 2 pages per group) : 25%
• Final paper: a 10 pages brief, based on a preliminary investigation work (readings, interviews, observation, etc.) describing an actual vulnerability situation and proposing a decision-oriented roadmap to undertake an adaptation process at the relevant scale: 40%.

Course workload

• In Class Presence: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class (including videos to watch): 2,5 hours a week / 30 hours a semester
• Research and multimedia work to analyze a situation and prepare a video capsule: 46 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for the individual final assessment: 50 hours a semester