The Heller School for Social Policy and Management s5

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

Brandeis University

HS 241f -1 Climate Change and Livelihoods

Fall term 20115

Module I

Instructor: Professor Joseph Assan, PhD

Email: ()

Tuesdays 2:00 – 4.55pm

Location: Room G1

Faculty Office Hours (by appointment only):

Tuesdays 5pm – 6.30pm at Prof Joseph Assan’s office (Room 154)

University notices:

1. If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.

2. You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. The University policy on academic honesty is distributed annually as section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Instances of alleged dishonesty are subject to possible judicial action. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. If you have any questions about our expectations, please ask. Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University. Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when assignments specifically authorize collaborative effort. It is not acceptable to use the words or ideas of another person – be it a world-class philosopher or your roommate – without proper acknowledgement of that source. This means that you must use footnotes and quotation marks to indicate the source of any phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas found in published volumes, on the internet, or created by another student. If you are in doubt about the instructions for any assignment in this course, you must ask for clarification.

Course information

This course is open to all Heller students. The course meets throughout the fall semester on Wednesday afternoons from 2:00 to 4:55pm. Attendance is required. Special complementary events like lectures workshops, training sessions, and expert-led conversations may also be offered. This syllabus is subject to change. Changes will be posted on the course website (Latte). None Heller and other Brandeis Senior Year students who wish to take this course should obtain permission for registration from Professor Joseph Assan.

Course Purpose and Rationale

There is now a firm consensus that climate change could slow or even undermine the best efforts to solve a variety of development challenges including poverty, water shortages and poor sanitation, disease and food insecurity, and loss of biodiversity. Coastal cities in the poorest and also in the wealthiest of nations are at risk from rising seas and more powerful storms. Development practitioners and indeed national leaders in every land and at all levels and in all contexts must knowledgeably and wisely begin to take climate change issues into account. They should have begun years ago, but better late than never.

Humans are dependent upon the natural environment and ecosystems for their survival and livelihoods. The dependence is more pronounced for the poor. Climate is one phenomenon that has played and continues to play a major role in shaping the environment that serves as a source of livelihood for the majority of the world’s poor communities. Current environmental variability and consequent climate change is predicted to cause increasing global temperatures, changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and more frequent and intense extreme weather events (IPCC WG I, 2007). Poor societies are not easily able to adapt to environmental change and climatic variability because of associated multiple stress and low adaptive capacity.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds long-term patterns of environmental variability and their likely impacts on the human security, livelihood activities and options of the poor (Brown and Crawford, 2008). The predicted consequences of environmental variability and climate change are diverse (Stern, 2007). Amongst them, projections suggest that by the end of the twenty-first century, they will have substantial impact on agricultural production and consequently the scope of reducing poverty. An overwhelming majority of developing countries have signed and ratified major international environmental conventions including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) particularly in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification (UNDP, 2006). Arvai et al. (2006, p. 217) argued that ‘effective policy responses to anticipatory interventions aimed at enhancing the resilience of social and natural systems (adaptation) have been difficult to formulate and often based on educated guesses’.

The UN warns that over 50 million people (mostly located in SSA) will be dislocated from their homes within 10 years as a result of climate induced desertification (Adeel, 2006). This will severely compromise their well-being, livelihoods and human security (Assan and Resenfeld, 2012). Desertification is also considered to be associated with major economic and social impacts. The annual loss of income as a result of land degradation is estimated at US$65 billion annually, and this does not include the difficult to measure but extremely important costs incurred in social and environmental terms to the current and future generations (GEF and GM, 2006). According to the UNDP (2011), over 3% of agricultural GDP is lost annually as a direct result of soil and nutrient loss. Communities suffer the most effects from the consequent food and energy insecurity and fore-gone investments in social services (infrastructure, markets, communication, health, education etc.). Moreover threats by desertification to sustainable land management and poverty alleviation are constantly changing. Current predictions suggest that these negative impacts would be exacerbated by increasing climatic variability and change.

Climate Change, Livelihoods and Human Security provides an introductory overview of the negative impacts of climatic variability and change on human well-being, livelihoods and security and examines policy strategies to address current patterns. The course would also examine recent impacts on development and discuss some of the policy approaches being employed to develop adaptation and resilience to the predicted impacts/concerns. The course would explore the selected thematic issues from a political economy and political ecology perspective.

This course has three interconnected goals and expected outcomes:

(1)  Introduce students to the inter-disciplinary field climate change, livelihood sustainability and human security through a multi-faceted approach and within the context of climate justice and development.

(2)  Examine some of the negative impacts of climatic variability on societies and communities and explore various policy interventions and strategies currently in place

(3)  Offer students the policy content needed to analyze the impacts of climate change and be able to develop policy strategies to address these concerns.

Course Values

The content and methods of the course reflect a pro-poor, pro-environment, and problem-solving perspective. Values in development policies and programs are not always explicit. We strive to train our students to be clear and unapologetic about the values that underpin their professional work.

Core Competency Statement

This course will help develop the following core competencies that are rooted in the values of sustainable development and the social justice mission of Brandeis University and the Heller School.

1.  Develop basic understating on current debates on environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change from a political economy and political ecology perspective

2.  Analyze how development policy has attempted to engage with the concepts and debates surrounding the impacts of climate change

3.  Build skills in preparing policy response and strategy papers for advanced professional communication (oral and written) on policy interventions that could be employed to enhance the resilience of societies and ensure the sustainability of current best practice as development professionals.

Course Requirements

To complete this course successfully you must attend class lecture and discussion sections. You are also responsible for the following assignments:

·  Participation: active and responsible participation in course activities that will be assessed by the instructor. This will include the timely submission of brief One Paragraph Reactions.

·  One response paper[1]: length should be TWO pages max (excluding references/bibliography), responding to a question related to the readings. Please examine the guidelines and submission procedures carefully. A calendar of response questions policy papers and due dates will be posted on LATTE separately.[2] The purpose of these go beyond a comprehension exercise to also teaching an essential skill useful for development workers along with the critical thinking, reading, and writing inherent in a response paper.

·  Oral Presentation: students will work in groups (3 or 4 students per group) and produce oral (power point) presentations on a question that will be set separately and uploaded on LATTE. This should be based on some of the issues discussed on the course. The detailed question for this task will be posted on LATTE.

·  Final paper: the length of the paper should be 5 pages max (excluding references). This should be submitted on Latte by 11.55pm of the indicated due date. Assignment and submission dates will be posted on Latte separately.

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR EACH ASSIGNMENT WILL BE ISSUED SEPARATELY AND POSTED ON LATTE.

Assessments and Grading

Evaluation of student performance will be based on the following:

1.  Submission of 1 short policy response paper: This will form 20% of the overall assessment of the module mark. These papers will be reviewed and assessed by faculty. Students will be given a set of feedback on their respective papers which is aimed at helping to improve the quality of analysis and critical engagement with the course materials. Response papers must be submitted on Latte by 11.55pm on the due date.

2.  Participation: Students will be required to attend ALL lectures. The professor will also monitor class attendance and participation. This will be through class attendance and in class discussions. Class participation will form 15% of the overall course mark. Students will however have 2% penalty deduction for each recorded absence in class.

3.  Oral Presentation on Policy Strategies - 30% of total mark.

4.  Policy Strategy Paper - 35% of total mark.

Grading Scheme: The course assignments will be graded as follows:

(A+) = 94 - 100%;

(A) = 88 - 93%;

(B+) = 83 - 87%;

(B) = 78 - 82%;

(C+) = 73 - 77 %

(D) = < 73%

Not submitted (NS) = 0.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY

Academic integrity is highly valued at the Heller School and Brandeis University. Research, scholarship and teaching are possible only in an environment characterized by honesty and mutual trust. Academic integrity requires that your work be your own. Because of the damage that violations of academic integrity do to the intellectual climate of the University, they are treated with the utmost seriousness and appropriate sanctions will be imposed as per university regulations.

Critical Reading

All readings will be drawn from a variety of texts and reference sources and posted on LATTE. The course will demand a significant amount of reading and pre-class preparation – most of it from academic journals, book chapters and reports. Most class meetings will focus on lectures with some in-depth and open discussions of the assigned reading materials. I view my primary role as a facilitator and instigator of in-class analysis and discussion of the materials and case studies we will explore. Students will be expected to complete the assigned readings prior to class and should be prepared to discuss the materials in detail. Suffice to say, students need to be ready, willing, and able to take an active role in class if they are perform well.

As you read, ask what each reading is saying about the goals for Africa’s development and the means to achieve these development targets. What values are implicit in each reading? Do you agree or disagree? You may want to draw a matrix listing the authors on the left and columns across the top to categorize the goals of development, values implicit and what each writer says about how to implement actions that will achieve the goals/targets.

Issues the course will not cover:

Given that this is a seven week course, we will unfortunately not be able cover all the issues relating to science of climate change, energy and mitigation as these may be covered in a separate course due to be offered by Prof Olson.

NOTE: LAPTOP, TABLET, OR SMARTPHONE USE DURING CLASS IS PROHIBITED. IT STIFLES DIALOGUE AND DISTRACTS EVEN THE BEST STUDENTS AND THOSE AROUND THEM – A (SADLY) NEEDED POLICY.

Students having special needs or concerns about the classroom environment are urged to come to my office to discuss any such issues.

Required Readings are listed below. Most readings can be accessed on the course website on Latte. Students are strongly encouraged to form peer reading groups to help you cover the reading materials thoroughly.

Further Readings are included on Latte. Most further recommended readings are available via e-journals and on the web. We encourage you to take advantage of these resources to explore a topic in greater detail.

Web Sources: There is a wealth of good material on the web, but there is also information that can be inaccurate or misleading. Always use web resources critically. Know what the source is, and whether and how you can evaluate its reliability. In particular, the IPCC, UN, UNEP, UNDP and World Bank websites give you access to reports and statistics. We will refer to others in class.

COURSE OUTLINE

Lecture 1: Current Patterns and impacts of Environmental Variability/ Climate Change on Livelihoods and Human Well-being

Date: 1st September

Focus: the session will discuss some of the current patterns of environmental and climate variability and identify some of the causal factors and how these are affecting societies

Required Readings:

UN ((2014) Sustainable Development Goals: Full Report of the Open Working Group of the General Assembly on Sustainable Development Goals, Issued as Document A/68/970, available at http://undocs.org/A/68/970

Global Humanitarian Forum (2009) Climate Change — The Anatomy of A Silent Crisis, Human Impact Report, Geneva.

Ehrhart, C. (2008) Humanitarian implications of Climate Change: Mapping Emerging Trends and Risk Hotspots. CARE, p.2.

O'Brien, K. L. and Leichenko, R. M. (2000). Double exposure: Global Environmental Change, 10(3), 221-232.

Lecture 2: Roots of Environmental Justice Movement and Climate Justice

Date: 8th September

Focus: The session will examine the roots of environmental climate justice and the concept of climate justice. The class will also discuss the emergence of environmental groups and the birth of climate justice?