Adapting to Climate Change
Melbourne University
Environmental Studies
Summer 2021
Prof. Jon Barnett
Masters
This subject focuses on climate change adaptation, and in particular its environmental, political, social and policy dimensions. It explores the ways which climate change poses risks to human wellbeing, and the ways these risks can be managed. It draws on examples from Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular from the teaching staff’s concurrent research on climate change adaptation in small islands. The subject explains that adaptation and its success can be thought of and approached in multiple ways, shaped in part by existing interests and the varied and dynamic places in which adaptation is being consciously or unconsciously implemented. The subject also highlights that adaptation poses as well as addresses risks, and that decisions about adaptation need to be considered critically and iteratively. The subject is taught in an intensive mode.