2024/25 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

PIED5580M Climate Security

30 creditsClass Size: 20

Module manager: Dr Sébastien Nobert
Email: S.Nobert@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

This module is not approved as an Elective

Module summary

Climate change is increasingly being linked to ideas of ‘emergency’ and ‘crisis’ and framed as a question of ‘security’. This module takes up how and why this is happening and examines what happens to climate politics when it becomes ‘securitized’ in different ways. Contemporary debates about climate security will be put into historical context relating them to older notions of environmental scarcity as a driver of conflict, and we examine how traditional security concerns now feed into climate debates and vice versa. It then looks forwards, considering the advantages and dangers of including climate in the exceptional framework of ‘security’ in an age of geopolitical tension and increasingly massive human impacts on Earth systems (‘Anthropocene’ security).

Objectives

This module aims to explore the diverse ways in which climate change is being thought of and tackled in terms of ‘security’, including through practices and problematics of national and international security, human security and ecological security. The ultimate aim of the module is to enable students to analyse and understand the history of, and affordances and dangers involved in, diverse ways in which logics of security and climate may mutually affect each other.

Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
1. Show critical awareness of historical strands of thought relating to sovereignty, secuirty and how environmental factors affect human conflicts.
2. Demonstrate understanding of how diverse discourses of climate security suggest different threats to different referent objects (such as state security, human welfare or natural systems).
3. Consider which actors and solutions are empowered and promoted through different climate security-framings, and demonstrate an understanding of the political implications of different ways of pursuing climate security.

Skills Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills learning outcomes:
1. Identify and analyse relevant information in order to develop and defend informed arguments.
2. Plan and develop an independent piece of writing, including a research-based essay and an op-ed piece.

Syllabus

Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	11	1.00	11.00
Seminar	11	1.00	11.00
Private study hours			278.00
Total Contact hours			22.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

1 x 1000 word formative essay in preparation for the final essay.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Assignment	Coursework	20.00
Assignment	Coursework	80.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

1 x 1000 word formative essay, in preparation for final essay.

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 29/04/2024 16:19:21

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