Environment, Climate Change and Resilience in Africa

Catalog description

This course provides an overview of the relationship between environment, climate change and livelihood resilience in Africa. The AFR 234 : Environment, Climate Change and Resilience (3 credits) course uses an interdisciplinary approach and a combination of conventional scientific and indigenous knowledge about environmental change, to enable students to develop a critical understanding of the concepts of environment, climate change, and sustainability and resilience in the face of environmental degradation in Africa. Topics to be covered in the course will include environmental change and extreme climatic conditions such as hurricanes, droughts, floods and winds in Africa; climate change and agriculture, natural resource conservation and conflicts, population growth and climate change, environmental sustainability, and indigenous resilience strategies to combat climate change and its sundry impacts on the continent and its peoples. Various ongoing resilient ecological management strategies, including indigenous knowledge, expertise of locally trained environmentalists, along with regional and global institutional perspectives of climate change, will be identified and discussed using case studies to provide a more comprehensive understanding of environmentally, friendly and climate change management policy debates in Africa. The course will be taught through class lectures, seminars, workshops, and scheduled field coursework in specific regions in Africa as a summer study abroad component of the course.