ENVI 305
Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change Spring 2025
Division II
Cross-listed GBST 131

This course seeks to bring three big concepts in climate change research together — vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation. We will learn the historical development of the concepts in their real-world settings — including poverty, rising indebtedness, flooding, water scarcity, forest degradation, and wildfire risk — and their solutions. Using state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research, and drawing on examples of how vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation have been operationalized and applied in current policy, students will learn the foundations of the theory and practice of climate change actions. The course will focus on cases from sectors such as forestry, agriculture, and water resources in the United States and several Global South nations. We will examine representations of these concepts in film, documentaries, music, and depictions in popular culture. By the end of this course, students will understand: the varied meanings of the three concepts; the major challenges that have been and need to be addressed; and the global context of climate change impacts viewed through the framework of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation.