Professionals working across public, private and community sectors are facing complex questions about how to prepare for and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of a changing climate. In the context of a growing climate emergency, how do we engage internal and external stakeholders, build lasting collaborative partnerships, and embed climate adaptation strategies into organizational priorities, when professional silos, scarce resources and competing demands can pose potent obstacles to the change that is urgently needed?
This course will provide you with skills to overcome barriers to action, mobilize knowledge and data effectively, and work across silos in genuine interdisciplinary and collaborative practice. You’ll learn how to lead or participate in community engagement, without triggering fear and overwhelming others; practise critical self-awareness and self-reflection; and consider equity-based and decolonizing approaches.
This course is designed for professionals looking to advance the intersecting work of climate action and adaptation, including planners, engineers, elected officials and community leaders. You will leave with practical and relevant skills to lead, accelerate and participate in the essential work of climate adaptation in your organization and community.
By the end of the course, you will be able to do the following:
- Describe the dynamics of collaborative, team-based planning processes
- Apply key concepts in climate communications and knowledge mobilization
- Engage in meaningful dialogue with internal and external stakeholders
- Develop adaptive and responsive strategies for working in complex systems
- Analyze and overcome internal and external barriers to climate adaptation
Learning Methods
You will work within scheduled start and end dates, as well as assignment timelines.
Your study schedule will be entirely up to you. In some cases, we may ask you to meet online with your class and your instructor or a guest at a specific time, but these sessions will be recorded for future viewing if you are unable to attend.
Expect to spend approximately 10 hours per week on reading, online discussions, course work and supplementary activities, such as viewing assigned videos.
Course Schedule
Week
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Topic and Lesson Objectives
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Activities
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1
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Strategic Dialogue and Engagement for Climate Adaptation
- Recognize the role of strategic dialogue in adaptation planning and engagement processes;
- Identify personal goals for leadership development and skills building;
- Build familiarity with core concepts and identify their relevance to course objectives and application in the field; and
- Build self-reflective capacity around questions of power, privilege and worldview, as they relate to dialogue and engagement.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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2
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Psychology of Climate Change and Adaptation
- Build literacy around the psychological impacts of climate change as they relate to engagement and dialogue for climate adaptation;
- Develop practices to support personal wellbeing as climate adaptation practitioners; and
- Identify how to apply psychologically supportive approaches to adaptation engagement and dialogue.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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3
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Climate Communications: Good Practices
- Recognize the distinction between strategic communications and ‘raising awareness’;
- Identify common psychological barriers in climate communications and learn approaches to address them in adaptation engagement; and
- Apply key concepts of strategic communications (identifying audiences/collaborators, framing, messengers, values alignment, empathy, core needs) to specific examples and scenarios.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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4
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Dialogue and Thinking/Learning Together
- Build and grow capacity to host and facilitate formal and informal processes that incorporate key dialogue principles;
- Recognize key principles of dialogue and their distinction from dominant patterns of group process;
- Identify and encourage characteristics of inclusive and generative processes; and
- Develop personal insights that can support ‘conversational leadership’ as facilitators of and participants in group process
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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5
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Principles of Organizational Change
- Build familiarity with a range of frameworks for approaching organizational change processes;
- Identify context-appropriate tools and methods to use when working to mainstream climate adaptation in organizations; and
- Develop a personalized and self-reflective approach to advancing climate adaptation within organizations.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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6
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Principles of Collaboration and Leadership
- Recognize key conditions for meaningful, equitable and effective interdisciplinary collaborations;
- Build familiarity with a range of approaches available for building cross-sectoral partnerships;
- Build capacity to balance process and product in partnership brokering; and
- Develop a personalized and self-reflective approach to interdisciplinary and collaborative work.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
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7
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Community Engagement
- Outline key principles of meaningful community engagement
- Build literacy around impacts of power and privilege on engagement and participation
- Develop capacity to build a strategic engagement plan
- Explore individual values and ethical responsibilities as they relate to community engagement
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
- Capstone Project
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8
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Putting It All Together
- Identify and apply key course concepts to individual capstone projects.
- Develop commitments to support development of specific skills.
- Build familiarity with approaches for working in complex systems.
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- Critical Reflection
- Skills Building
- Community Building Discussion
- Capstone Project
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