Energy, Societal Safety and Sustainable Development (SAM550)

NB! This is an elective course and may be cancelled if fewer than 10 students are enrolled by 20th August for the autumn semester.

This course focuses on the complex relationship between societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development. The course highlights what societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development entail and how they mutually affect each other within the global community. Global challenges about food, water, energy, and environmental security within the constraints of climate change will be addressed. In addition, the course also discusses challenges in achieving sustainable development in light of societal safety/security dilemmas. Theoretical and analytical frameworks will be proposed to understand these linkages. Students will gain a greater appreciation of these frameworks to obtain a deeper and better understanding of the relationship between societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development, including dilemmas and contradictions between and within these fields, at global and European level.

After completing the course, it is expected that students will have attained the following knowledge, skills, and general competencies:

Knowledge of:

• natural and man-made threats that can pose risks and affect security and vulnerability.
• key concepts in societal safety/security, including risk, hazards, vulnerability, resilience, crises, disasters, and disaster risk reduction (DRR)
• the meaning of diverse security referent objects, more specifically food, water, energy, and environmental security, including climate security
• how societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development mutually influence each other
• key dilemmas, uncertainties, and challenges related to societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development, particularly considering the food, water, energy, and environmental security nexus

Skills:

• students should be able to analyse and critically relate to various sources of information and use these to structure and formulate social security-related reflections
• students should be able to critically reflect on dilemmas, challenges, uncertainties and linkages between societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development
• students should be able to critically reflect on security objects, to develop a better understanding of how societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development are problematised in the light of various explanatory analytical frameworks
• students should be able to approach issues of food, water, energy, and environmental security from a nexus perspective, and see these in relation to societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development perspective

General competence:

• students should be able to analyse research relevant critical issues related to societal safety/security.
• students should develop an appreciation of how energy, food, water, and environmental security issues raise questions to sustainable development, with important implications for societal safety/security.
• students should master different analytical frameworks to study complex questions related to uncertainties.
• students should become better positioned to engage critically in discussions, reports, and projects concerning societal safety/security, climate change, and sustainable development at global and European level.

Compulsory assignment with a limited number of words. Students must hand in a written assignment - individually or in a group - which must be approved to gain access to the digital exam on campus.

Duration: 9 weeks

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