PaCE-SD

Postgraduate Diploma in Climate Change

Adaptation Stream


The Adaptation and Management Emphasis stream focuses on impacts, vulnerabilities, solutions; adaptation and management. This stream enables a student to attain skills in documenting social and physical impacts of climate change and disasters, mastering and improving adaptation and management strategies including community and ecosystem-based adaptation. Students may also explore low carbon and green development supported by robust environmental impact and strategical environmental assessment, migration, food security, climate finance and risk transfer mechanisms, multi-lateral reporting, disaster risk management, response and recovery.

To be admitted to a postgraduate diploma, a person should:

  • Have obtained a USP’s bachelor’s degree with a GPA of at least 3.0 in the 200 and 300 level courses of the relevant disciplines;
  • Have obtained a tertiary qualification deemed by the senate or its delegate to be equivalent to above;
  • Have obtained a professional qualification deemed by Senate or its delegate to be equivalent to above;
  • Have, in exceptional cases, demonstrated experience or achievement Senate or its delegates deems sufficient; or
  • Have met the mature student admission criteria

PC414 – Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation

Semester: 1.                 Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: TBC

Course Description:
This postgraduate course examines the risks posed to Pacific Islands by Climate Change and reviews the adaptation strategies to deal with those risks, both at national and community levels. The course is intended for people in the Pacific islands involved with medium-to-long term planning for natural resources, economic and social development, and/or the natural environment, especially graduates working in governments or NGOs who are not yet familiar with climate related issues but need to be so.

PC415 – Climate Science

Semester: 2.            Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Dr. Awnesh Singh

Course Description:
This course provides important insights into the rapidly developing and fast moving realm of climate science among the future climate leaders of the Pacific to understand the scientific basis of the threats of the impacts of CC to develop appropriate measures to address and manage the challenges of the adverse impacts. This course navigates through new scientific evidences on our current scientific understanding of the earth’s climate including those which point at important tipping points leading to perhaps irreversible changes in major systems and ecosystems. The course also provides adequate skill in climatology of the region and the tools/methodology applied in the analyses and is thus useful for those intending to work with national meteorological services or other government agencies.

At least 1 of PC423 or PC425 or PC426 or PC431. Any remaining 400 level PC course or one of the following 400 level course:
BI442
EV402
GE407
GE409

If you wish to progress onto Masters of Science in Climate Change, than you will need to do PC420, with either PC414 or PC415.

PC420: Research Projects in Climate Change

Semester: 1  & 2    Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Dr. Awnesh Singh

Course Description: The course is suitable for students who want to do a short research project in climate science, climate finance, tropical meteorology, physical oceanography, disaster risk management, food security, environment impact assessment, climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation and ecosystem-based adaptation at the postgraduate level. The course is tailored to the individual students’ requirements and is designed as an opportunity to work on a particular research topic. Students are required to do an independent research project, which includes a major report and seminar. Before registering for this course, students must first seek out a supervisor, obtain their agreement to provide supervision, and be assigned a research topic.

PC423: Food Security and Climate Change

Semester: 1 Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Lau Dr Viliamu Iese

Course Description:
The continuing exposure and experience of climate change both locally and globally has made food security a global concern especially to vulnerable small island states of the Pacific Island community. This course examines the food system and status of food security at pre, during and post extreme climatic change events and challenges and factors affecting food security. The various international Food Security frameworks and policies will be examined and compared to the Pacific Food Security framework in order to help design appropriate adaptation protocols that will contribute to a climate resilient and sustainable food secure communities. The focus of adaptations will be related to strengthening the four pillars of food security through application of agro-technology and agromet decision support systems, resilient crops and farming systems, post-harvest, food safety and food preservations.

PC425: Environmental Impact Assessment/Strategic Environment Assessment

Semester: 2 Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Dr. Hilda Sakiti – Waqa

Course Description:
The object of this course is to teach students how to effectively process Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of development proposals from strategic and project perspectives. A brief critical analysis of the social impact assessment process will be addressed and linked to the overall EIA/SEA process. It is adjunct to the specialist environmental skills developed in our undergraduate science, arts, business and law programs. Students will acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the best practice assessment process for achieving sustainable development whereby specialist skills can be effectively applied to ensure that development throughout the Pacific region is sustainable.

PC426: Pacific Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology in Relation to Climate Change

Semester: 2 Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Dr. Antoine De Ramon N’Yeurt

Course Description:
This course is designed to familiarize with the causes and effects of climate change on terrestrial and marine ecosystems in an island setting, the importance of the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity and linkage to peoples’ livelihood, food security and health. The course will enable one to understand the inter-linkages between climate change and ecology and how to strengthen institutional mechanisms and systems for mobilisation and participation of all stakeholders at various levels on the role of ecosystems in climate change mitigation and adaptation management. This course will also equip with tools for ecosystem based adaptation for climate change and help understand the importance of incorporating traditional and cultural approaches.

PC431: Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience

Semester: 1 Mode: O at C

Course Coordinator: Lau Dr Viliamu Iese

Course Description:
This course is designed to familiarise the learners with a theoretical and practical understanding of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) to support resilience building in the Pacific. It provides comprehensive knowledge on hazards, risk and vulnerability and practical uses of tools to assess risk. Actions to improve people’s preparedness to disaster will be also be critically analysed. The links between natural hazards and climate change and between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are analysed. Students will develop better communication skills for DRR with a better understanding of the importance of incorporating gender-sensitive and inclusive approaches in DRR.

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