Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL3154: The Politics of Climate Change

This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.

Module Aims

This module aims to help you examine why the issue of climate change is so difficult to address. While being rooted in concepts from political science, it aims to provide you with a platform through which the climate change problematique can be analysed from different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Through a mixture of role play, discussions, seminar presentations and group work your learning will be organised key aspects of climate change governance, namely: politicalisation of science, the political economy of climate change, fairness in international negotiations’ and evaluating climate policy.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills	1. understand the role and perspectives of different actors involved in climate policy. 2. demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of the complexities of addressing climate change across different policy sectors and governance scales; 3. evaluate critically policy initiatives to tackle climate change; 4. identify examples of climate policy good practice and produce a critical evaluation of the lessons that can be drawn; 5. recognise the difficulties in reaching a meaningful global agreement on climate change
Discipline-Specific Skills	6. think critically, analyse debates and present coherent arguments on politics; 7. evaluate the effectiveness of policy; 8. understand in-depth the reasons for and barriers to policy intervention; 9. critically apply theories of political science and international relations to real-life political situations
Personal and Key Skills	10. effectively communicate complex topics in a coherent and well structured manner; 11. reflect critically on learning outcomes

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:\

1. The politicisation of climate science

2. The political economy of climate change

3. Climate policy evaluation

4. Communicating climate change

5. International climate policy

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	128	0

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled Learning and teaching activity v	22	Weekly 2 hour seminars over 11 weeks
Guided Independent study	78	Reading and seminar preparation
Guided Independent study	50	Course work preparation and writing

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

ELE – http://vle.exeter.ac.uk