Course Description

Climate resilience has become one of the key goals of governance and policymaking, with various state and non-state actors designing, developing, and implementing their visions for resilience. Growing trends in urbanization have made the 21st century the ‘urban century’, and urban settlements have come to play a pivotal role in climate mitigation and adaptation. For students interested in a career in environmental law/public policy, this course introduces the broad architecture of agents, systems, and institutions involved in climate resilience with a specific focus on urban settlements.

The course is designed as a stand-alone course for students of law and public policy in the MPP and LLM programs, with senior students of BA LLB (Hons) and LLB (Hons) also welcome. The course provides exposure to international, transnational, national, and subnational efforts aimed at climate adaptation and mitigation. It builds on the core courses in law and public policy, providing an opportunity for students to apply their learnings in the context of governing climate resilience.

The course will be covered in three modules. Module 1 (Foundations) focuses on introducing the concepts of resilience, adaptation, mitigation, systems theory, and climate risk. This module will also introduce the key international, transnational, and national governance architecture surrounding climate resilience, with a specific focus on India. Module 2 (Resilience Instruments) will explore the different policy and planning instruments for climate resilience, with a specific focus on critically examining resilience instruments developed in urban coastal settlements. Introductory hands-on sessions will be provided on conducting geospatial analysis and interpreting climate resilience-related data. Module 3 (Community-driven Resilience-building) will explore efforts to build resilience from the bottom-up, focusing on instances where communities have identified autonomous adaptation techniques or partnered with state/non-state actors in creative ways. This module complements Module 2 which studies top-down/government-led resilience-building. Together, the three modules provide a robust set of skills and knowledge on climate resilience that students of law and public policy can utilize in their dissertations and careers.

We will follow a student-centric pedagogy involving seminar style discussions of academic readings, group-based in-class activities, and lectures. Most classes will have materials for pre-class reading, which may include academic journal articles, newspaper articles, or other materials, such as documentaries.