BUP associated teachers join forces to offer a new course

2021-08-24

A collaboration between different university teachers in the region, has resulted in a new course on Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region. It is now open for registration. Pontus Ambros, one of the course initiators and Project Administrator for the BUP, explains why the course was put together: “We need to respond to the urgent climate crisis, and the first step is to ensure we are educated and will be able to respond, adapt and mitigate.”

The BUP has lacked an updated climate change course that tackles the issue from an interdisciplinary approaches, and it was important to advance with this curriculum. So the BUP started the project BSRCCC, to gather university teachers that are experts in this area. The project resulted in the material that now is the course. The course is a collaboration between fourteen universities around the Baltic Sea Region, and currently hosted by Uppsala University.

University teachers working on the course curriculum
University teachers working together on the course curriculum.
From the left: Jaak Jaagus, Maria Falaleeva, Svitlana Boychenko, Jukka Käyhkö.
Photo by Pontus Ambros.

Why is the regional perspective important?

- Climate change is often seen as a global problem, but responses are often local and regional, says Pontus Ambros, and continues: This course enables us to have a coherent understanding of climate change in the Baltic Sea region.

The course content mainly focuses on regional perspectives, global issues are addressed to a lesser degree. The curriculum integrates concepts from different sciences to help students understand the phenomena of climate change, the reasons behind them, and why these phenomena are both scientifically and socially important. Both theory and practice, as well as challenges and solutions are highlighted.

The interdisciplinary content is presented in a six step method to understand climate change:

  1. explaining the basic climatology,
  2. the evidences of a warming climate,
  3. the human causes of climate change,
  4. the certainties and uncertainties of climate change research,
  5. impacts and risks associated with a warming of the climate, and
  6. interdisciplinary solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Who is the course aimed at?

- The course is open for anyone, but the main target group is undergraduate students from all fields, says Pontus Ambros.

How do you expect the attendees will benefit from the course?

- Many other courses have a more narrow approach to climate change. This course approach climate change from a very holistic point of view, and the attendees will get a better understanding for how climate changes affects the whole society and how we can tackle these changes as a region.

About the course

The materials from the BSRCCC project will be used by several universities in many different courses. Uppsala University will offer the complete course under the name Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region

The course will soon also be offered as non-credited Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available free of charge for anyone interested.

News from 2021

Last modified: 2023-01-12