Witness the causes of climate change and its social-ecological impacts in hotspots across four continents and examine possibilities for local and global environmental justice.
16
Relevant previous coursework recommended
English
Sep 3 – Dec 16
Ecuador, Morocco, Nepal, United States
USA, Morocco, Nepal, Ecuador
Climate & Environment
Development & Inequality
Explore some of the world’s most productive, unique, and vulnerable landscapes to witness how climate change impacts regions differently and how communities are responding to the climate crisis. In four profoundly different cultural, historical, and socioecological contexts, three of which have UNESCO World Heritage status, you will analyze the challenges of working toward more equitable food, water, and energy systems. Examine the problems and possible solutions for environmental justice with researchers, farmers, renewable energy producers, water managers, activists, non-governmental organizations, government officials, and policymakers.
In Morocco, you will meet farmers striving to preserve and modernize their agricultural and water management practices and understand how the country, which has few fossil fuels, is navigating the transition to renewable energy. In Nepal, you will be uniquely located in a country that is vulnerable to climate change but has numerous innovative initiatives to tackle this global challenge. Interact with renowned experts and institutions across the country, see protected wildlife in Chitwan National Park, and participate in a guided overnight trek to Kapuche Glacier Lake in Nepal’s Annapurna mountain range to witness firsthand accelerating climate change impacts and learn about successful community initiatives. In Ecuador, you will explore climate resilience strategies in and around the capital city of Quito and travel to Yasuni National Park in the Amazon Basin to understand the threats of climate change and Indigenous-led efforts to protect this extraordinary region from fossil fuel extraction.
Explore a Day in the Life of an IHP student!
Photos on this page may depict program sites from previous semesters. Please view the Program Sites section of this page to see where this program will travel.
None, although previous coursework in political science, economics, or environmental science is recommended.
(10 days)
Starting in the San Francisco Bay Area, study environmental justice and how race, class, and gender are key social determinants of vulnerability to climate change. Meet activists involved in the climate justice movement and delve into U.S. climate policy. Consider the fossil fuel industry’s impacts on communities in the East Bay and learn about urban food and environmental justice efforts.
(4+ weeks)
In the port city of Rabat, Morocco’s capital and diplomatic center and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, examine the complex social and political issues facing this country on the front lines of climate change. You will visit communities working to preserve their local water sources and meet with farmers striving to modernize their small-scale agricultural practices. You will visit an organic farm training center in Marrakech, and in Ouarzazate, the gateway to the Sahara Desert, you will have the unique opportunity to visit one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the world.
(4+ weeks)
With a predominantly agrarian society in fragile mountain ecosystems, Nepal has one of the highest climate change vulnerability profiles in the world. You will develop your understanding of the region’s mountain people, their livelihoods, and the relevance of Himalayan ethnic identities and language endangerment to matters of equity and environmental security. You will learn about the biophysical and socioeconomic impacts that melting glaciers, shifting rainfall patterns, droughts, and floods are having on both highland and downstream agrarian communities. You will also examine how Nepal’s relationship to the global climate financing mechanism affects its climate policies focusing on adaptation and transition to a low-carbon economy.
(4+ weeks)
Ecuador is home to four distinct ecological and geographical regions with specific climate change impacts and vulnerabilities: the Pacific coast, the Andes Highlands, the Amazon rainforest, and the Galapagos islands. In Quito, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, explore climate resilience strategies related to water scarcity, energy sovereignty, and land conflict, and consider how these topics intersect with challenges brought about by climate change. Visit the Amazon Basin, where you will learn about how oil and gas extraction and climate change impacts on one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.
Please note that SIT will make every effort to maintain its programs as described. To respond to emergent situations, however, SIT may have to change or cancel programs.
Upon successful completion of the program, students will be able to:
The following syllabi are representative of this program. Because courses develop and change over time to take advantage of dynamic learning opportunities, actual course content will vary from term to term.
The syllabi can be useful for students, faculty, and study abroad offices in assessing credit transfer. Read more about credit transfer.
Science and Policy of Climate Change – syllabus
(ENVI3010 / 4 credits)
Climate change is both a natural and human-induced phenomenon, which affects the sustainable development of societies in different ways. This course is intended to provide the foundational scientific concepts for students to understand the drivers and impacts of anthropogenic climate change. However, anthropogenic climate change needs to be understood as a multi-faceted environmental and political crisis. To the extent that science can help us deal with climate change as a matter of natural resource management, it also has a profoundly political dimension. Despite the consolidation of scientific consensus around climate change, an underlying assumption we take in this course is that the most crucial yet vexing solutions are political. This course therefore also aims to critically engage with the science/policy interface. We examine local, regional, and national mitigation and adaptation strategies as a matter of natural resource management and social policy. We learn about environmental governance mechanisms at local and regional levels, national climate policy frameworks, and global climate change negotiations.
Political Economy and Environmental Change since 1492 – syllabus
(ECON3010 / 4 credits)
Political economy studies the creation and distribution of wealth by asking “who gets what, why and with what consequences,” with special attention to the role of governments and public policy. Experiential and comparative learning exposes us to the very “real-world” dynamics of how wealth, material assets, and political assets are distributed across and within countries and challenges us to consider dilemmas of justice and equity across space and time. In this course, we will read scholarly literature that explores concepts such as Marxism, development, and neoliberalism and discuss how they can help us understand the ways that the physical environment has been shaped by the social environment—including governments, laws, policies, private corporations, individuals, social movements, and communities. In this way, we will be looking at political ecology as a subset of or parallel framework to political ecology.
Comparative Issues in Food, Water, and Energy – syllabus
(SDIS3070 / 4 credits)
This course takes a systems approach to examine the global and regional production and consumption of food, water, and energy within the context of climate change. We will pay particular attention to the food-energy-water nexus (the interdependencies among these systems) and the embeddedness of these systems within the natural world. We will examine these systems and their nexus in each of the regions we visit, and consider the multiple dimensions of food, energy and water as source, as infrastructure, and as flow.
We will also use the lens of political ecology to consider the ways in which the complex relationships that make up the natural environment involve social relationships of power. We will interrogate how and why certain ways of relating to the environment, including the management of resources, the development of infrastructure, and specific flows of goods and services become dominant, while others become marginalized or excluded. Who benefits from the design of these systems, who bears the costs, and under what circumstances? How do relations of power in society mediate these dynamics?
Fieldwork Ethics and Comparative Research Methods – syllabus
(ANTH3500 / 4 credits)
This course will support students in developing their own comparative research project to explore the politics of food, water and/or energy in relation to climate change across at least two program countries. It will give students an introduction to the qualitative research methods that social scientists have developed for their empirical investigations. Its main goals are first, to learn how to use research methods, primarily interviewing, participant observation and comparative analysis; and second, to encourage critical thinking about the research design and implementation. This includes matching methods to research questions, being aware of and managing our biases and assumptions, understanding how the research process and the identity of research participants influence the data we gather, and comprehending ethical dilemmas raised by fieldwork.
Student accommodations will include a mix of homestays, hostels, guesthouses, and small hotels/dorms. Students will experience homestays and will be oriented as they move from place to place.
More About Homestay Experiences:
Family structures will vary. For example, a host family may include a single mother of two small children, or a large extended family with many people coming and going. Please bear in mind that the idea of what constitutes a “home” (i.e., the physical nature of the house) may be different from what you would expect. You will need to be prepared to adapt to a new life with a new diet, a new schedule, new people, and possibly new priorities and expectations.
In most cases, students will be placed in homestays in pairs, with placements made to best accommodate health concerns, including allergies or dietary needs. Information about homestay families will only be available upon arriving in each country.
Recent positions held by alumni of this program include:
Research assistant for the United Nations, conducting work in Ecuador
Truman Scholarship recipient, continuing research at the postgraduate level
Fulbright recipients, returning to work in the countries the program visits
Intern at EcoPeace Middle East, Amman, Jordan
The faculty/staff team shown on this page is a sample of the individuals who may lead your specific program. Faculty and coordinators are subject to change to accommodate each program’s unique schedule and locations.
SIT Study Abroad is committed to ensuring that international education is within reach for all students. We believe in the transformative power of immersive, intercultural experiences and are dedicated to supporting students in their educational journey.
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