Energy, Societal Safety and Sustainable Development (SAM550)

Content

This course focuses on the relationships between societal safety and sustainable development with particular emphasis on food, water, energy and environmental security and climate change. The course critically discusses challenges of vulnerability, gradual and abrupt change, supply, demand and access, with the aim of facilitating understanding and appreciation of competing agendas and narratives in research on these issues. Lastly, students of this course will also gain greater appreciation of the relationship between sustainable development and societal safety in a changing climate, including dilemmas and contradictions between and within these fields. 

Learning outcome

It is expected that students after completing the course will have attained the following knowledge, skills and general competencies:

Knowledge:

• of key concepts in societal safety and security, including concepts of risk, vulnerability, resilience, and the difference between hazards and disasters.
• of the meaning of new security referents, more specifically food, water, energy and environmental security, including climate security.
• of how disaster resilience and sustainable development, or lack thereof, mutually influence each other
• of key dilemmas, uncertainties and challenges related to societal safety, disaster risk and sustainable development, particularly in light of the food, water, energy and environmental security nexus.
• of how to analyze risks and hazards from a disaster risk reduction (DRR) perspective

Skills:

• Students should be able to reflect critically on prevailing paradigms in societal safety and DRR, with the aim of developing a greater appreciation of how disaster research can be analyzed and problematized by drawing on such worldviews
• Students should be able to apply relevant DRR tools and frameworks to analyze the relationship between hazards, vulnerability, exposure and disasters
• Students should be able to approach issues of food, water, energy and environmental security from a nexus perspective, and see this in relation to societal safety and sustainable development

General competence:

• Students should develop an appreciation of how energy, energy transitions, and energy security relates to issues of food, water and environmental security, with important implications for sustainable development and societal safety
• Students should become better positioned to engage critically in discussions, reports and projects concerning hazards, risks and causes of disasters

Required prerequisite knowledge

None

Exam

Coursework requirements

Short essay

Students must have completed the following assignments to sit the exam: all students have to actively participate in group works, write a summary of 1-2 articles/book chapters on the curriculum, and present written contributions to the other students.  

Course teacher(s)

Course coordinator:

Reidar Staupe-Delgado

Head of Department:

Tore Markeset

Method of work

Lectures, seminars, project supervision, presentations and peer-review 

Open for

Open for all master students at UiS (except EVU master's programmes).

Course assessment

Student evaluation will be conducted in accordance with the evaluation system of the Faculty.

Literature