School of Public Policy 590STE - GlobalClimateCh&Geopol/Energy

Climate change has become a threat multiplier that is exacerbating existing conflicts and has the potential to cause new conflicts around the world, ones with serious geopolitical implications. While geopolitics used to be driven primarily by security and economic concerns, the growing impact of climate change is making it increasingly evident that it too is increasingly impinging on critical geopolitical reconfigurations. There has been considerable work on the politics of climate change and energy security as separate issues, but much less on the relationship between the two. Understanding the complex inter-relationship between energy, climate, and security is vital to the study of international relations, foreign and public policy. This course traces the separation between energy and climate and analyses energy security as constructed continually as national security, which results in particular policy choices prioritising it over climate concerns. Thus policies formulated on energy security have contributed in/directly to climate insecurity. Formulating climate-sensitive and effective policies requires a deeper understanding of the country-specific political economy of energy and climate policy formulation. Citing empirical evidence from various case studies, the course uses an interdisciplinary approach to provide a critical overview of the workings of climate change and energy policies and explore possible areas of interventions to mitigate and prevent the adverse effects of climate change.