Course Description

This course is an introductory course for students who do not have a background in scientific research. The course aims to prepare students for basic research as it demonstrates how to collect, summarize and interpret data, in numerical and figure form, and to draw conclusions from research data. In addition, it will develop students' capability to use existing government research and other evidence for policy development. Use assessment data to evaluate, control, and improve disaster management quality. This bridging course provides a conclusive study of the concepts, views and terminologies associated with quantitative and qualitative approaches to scientific indicators for numerical statistics in field of climate change.

This bridging course is designed to provide students with a fundamental knowledge of introduction to meteorology, essential background for further studying changes in weather and climate. This course includes atmospheric structure, energy transfer, water balance, wind systems, air pollution and climate. Lectures will be supplemented by discussions on live weather conditions and forecasting and severe weather events. This course aims at providing students with a fundamental understanding of basic meteorology, essential background for further studying changes in weather and climate.

This course will help students understand concepts of climate change, adaptation and mitigation so that they are able to engage in the language of international climate terminologies being used at national and global levels. This course will provide concepts related to the basic science of climate phenomena to encompass an understanding of the complexity of climate change; students will explore important developing national and international aspects of climate change. After this course student will have insight into basic science concepts of how climate change happens and impacts on environmental, social and economic aspects of their livelihood. Overall this course will familiarise students with standard terminology so they can engage with the national, regional and global research and literature of climate change science.

This course explores the science of climate change. Students will learn how the climate system works; what factors cause climate to change across different time scales and how those factors interact; how climate has changed in the past; how scientists use models, observations and theory to make predictions about future climate; and the possible consequences of climate change for our planet. The course explores evidence for changes in ocean temperature, sea level and acidity due to global warming. Students will learn how climate change today is different from past climate cycles and how satellites and other technologies are revealing the global signals of a changing climate. Finally, the course looks at the connection between human activity and the current warming trend and considers some of the potential social, economic and environmental consequences of climate change.

The course provides the theory and practices to students related to tropical climate and meteorology, and its future projection. The course mainly includes thermodynamics of moist air, theory of moist convection, cumulus convection and the tropical boundary layer, interaction between cumulus scale and large-scale motions, monsoon meteorology and tropical cyclones, observations of tropical wave disturbances and applications of Spectral Analysis, generation mechanisms of tropical waves, Quasi-biennial, semi-annual and Intra-seasonal oscillations, Air-sea Interactions in the tropics, the Southern Oscillation and El Nino, Inter-annual variation in the tropics and climate prediction, Statistical methods of analysing meteorological data, Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs). For analysis part, the course includes the Factor Analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA): Application to climate classification, Discriminant Analysis, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis, Spectral Analysis, and Partial Differential equations: Polynomial, Spline, and Discretisation.

The developing Asian nations have been enjoying moderate to high growth over the last quarter of a century. While the region has been making strong progress in early part of the 21st century, new challenges have also emerged. The most important among them is the issue of climate change and its devastating impact on the economic and social aspects of the region. In this course students will investigate three major areas: general climate change issues, sustainable growth and climate change adaptation in the early 21st Century. In this course, therefore, the major aim is to study the opportunities created by globalization via trade, knowledge and technology adoption in recent years, as well as the threats the climate change provides in taking away these opportunities (sustainable growth) in the future.

This research methodology course provides students with training in the use of web-based tools to access and analyse climate data in support of climate-related dissertations. Students will enhance their existing knowledge of research methodology by developing their knowledge of specific methods related to climate change. During the course students will explore various types of climate data available including both observed data and future projections from climate models. The course offers an overview of the various statistical and analytical functions of the web-based analysis tools. Students will then participate in a number of demonstration case study projects focusing on selected regions using the learnt techniques; these will include quantifying future climate trends; quantifying climate change risk profiles for extreme climate events e.g. heat waves or droughts; analysing sector specific climate impacts e.g. agriculture, water resources; seasonal-decadal prediction

The course provides the basic concept and practical experiences in working with GIS and remote sensing as a tool for investigating and monitoring natural resource management and climate change. ArcGIS Desktop is employed to examine some of the tools in viewing, managing, and processing GIS and remote sensing data. ArcGIS Desktop is a collection of software products that is used to create, import, edit, query, map, analyse, and publish geographic information.

Impacts of climate change pose very serious risks for countries, vital ecosystems, agriculture, forestry, health, local economic activities and biodiversity. In conjunction with other pressures, climate change could also exacerbate existing local and regional challenges, such as poverty, poor healthcare, and inequitable distribution of resources, diminishing ecological resiliency and energy insecurity. This course outlines future climate scenario projections and enables students to gain practical experience in using such projections. The course uses the general Drivers, Pressures, State, Impacts, Responses (DPSIR) framework to meet the stated learning outcomes. Students will identify processes to address the impacts of climate change in the context of other development priorities and ecosystems; this will enable them as decision-makers to adopt more sustainable development pathways to assure ecosystem resilience.

Of Cambodia’s population of 15.5 million, more than 70 per cent are engaged in the agricultural sector where the vast majority are smallholder farmers. Along with farming crops, mainly rice, agricultural activities include livestock rearing and a large and highly productive freshwater capture fisheries sector. There are however considerable challenges facing the growth and sustainability for Cambodia agricultural sector such as limited in-country agricultural processing, lack of irrigation planning and infrastructure and poor access to markets, which limits the realisation of economic benefits. This course introduces students to the important debates about Cambodia’s agricultural sustainability in the context of climate change. Students will investigate the particular vulnerabilities the agricultural sector and the kinds of climate change mitigation strategies and actions that are required to build resilient agricultural livelihoods.

This course examines the impacts of changing climate on natural and human systems and focuses on the capacity of societies to adjust to, plan for and cope with changing climate and environmental conditions. In addition, this course examines the anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas emissions and the range of strategies to reduce these emissions and to enhance carbon sequestration. The policy frameworks governing climate change mitigation are critically appraised from geopolitical, economic and ethics perspectives. This course also considers the potential role of climate remediation strategies.

Climate Modelling and GHG Inventory are important to understand the variable impact of Climate Change, and use this to improve the climate change planning. A greenhouse gas inventory is an accounting of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted to, or removed from the atmosphere over a period of time. Policy makers use inventories to track emission trends, develop mitigation strategies and policies, and assess progress. An inventory is usually the first step taken by institutions that want to reduce their GHG emissions. This course will cover the different types and characteristics of Greenhouse Gas (GHG), methods of calculating emissions in various sectors, Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC), Calculation Methods by sectors, and Methodology for GHG inventory compilation. Students will use the IPCC GHG Inventory Software (“IPCC Inventory Software”) published in 2006 for course practicum.

Water is fundamental to all aspects of human and economic development. This course enables students to understand the central importance of water for meeting social economic and development objectives. Cambodia’s central location in the Mekong River system means that water resource management has a trans-boundary dimension. Students will investigate the effects of climate change on the Mekong River hydrologic regime, on fisheries and ecosystems; how changes in water availability affects human health, social and economic development. The course also prepares students to plan for the mitigation of climate change impacts on water resources generally and in Cambodia in particular.

Global climate change poses a threat to the well-being of humans and animals through its impact on ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, capital productivity, and human health. Climate Change economics attends to this issue by offering theoretical insights and empirical findings relevant to the design of policies to reduce, avoid, or adapt to climate change. Economic analysis has yielded new estimates of the benefits of mitigation, improved understanding of costs in the presence of various market distortions or imperfections, better tools for making policy choices under uncertainty, and alternate mechanisms for allowing flexibility in policy responses. These contributions have influenced the formulation and implementation of a range of climate change policies at the domestic and international levels.

Ecosystems across the planet are facing unprecedented pressures and changes as society seeks to support continued population growth and increasing standards of living. Understanding how ecosystems in Earth’s biosphere interacts with the climate system and how feedback alters the services that ecosystems provide necessary to meet society’s demands. Climate Change and Ecosystems is designed to provide students with a general understanding of the climate system, ecosystems, and feedbacks between the two. This course broadly covers: 1) global change factors, including climate change, land-use change, and pollution, 2) life on land, where we will explore the diversity of Earth’s ecosystems, 3) global change impacts, where we will identify how global change factors are impacting our ecosystems, and 4) ecosystem services, where we will examine the coupling of human and natural systems.

Modern society is based on the availability of low cost and reliable energy. Most of this energy currently comes from fossil fuels. There are significant societal and environmental costs to our use of fossil fuels, however. These costs stem from problems associated with the extraction, refining and distribution of fossil fuels as well as with their use in transport, manufacturing, buildings and electricity generation. The biggest of these problems are water contamination, regional air pollution, and global climate change. Alternatives to fossil fuels include nuclear and renewable energy, but these have environmental costs as well, and in general remain more expensive and complicated to deploy and operate on a large scale. And while increasing energy efficiency and conservation can help reduce environmental impacts of hydrocarbon use, growing population and rising living standards limit the extent to which these particular measures can be implemented. The course is designed give students a framework for thinking about why energy-related events are happening in the world, what they may mean for future energy use and by extension societal and environmental well-being, and how we might improve our current energy system moving forward.

Modern society is based on the availability of low cost and reliable energy. Most of this energy currently comes from fossil fuels. There are significant societal and environmental costs to our use of fossil fuels, however. These costs stem from problems associated with the extraction, refining and distribution of fossil fuels as well as with their use in transport, manufacturing, buildings and electricity generation. The biggest of these problems are water contamination, regional air pollution, and global climate change. Alternatives to fossil fuels include nuclear and renewable energy, but these have environmental costs as well, and in general remain more expensive and complicated to deploy and operate on a large scale. And while increasing energy efficiency and conservation can help reduce environmental impacts of hydrocarbon use, growing population and rising living standards limit the extent to which these particular measures can be implemented. The course is designed give students a framework for thinking about why energy-related events are happening in the world, what they may mean for future energy use and by extension societal and environmental well-being, and how we might improve our current energy system moving forward.

Land use change plays a large role in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and deforestation, and land use planning (LUP) plays a vital role in Climate Change mitigation and adaption. Low Emission Land Use Planning (LELUP) combines of ecology, social science and economics into sustainable utilisation and conservation of land and natural resources. The subject will explore the use modern technology such as GPS, GIS, in the context of traditional and modern relationships to land and natural resources. In addition technics in land use management in the context of sustainable development and management of land and natural resource base on ecological, social and economic balance.. After this course student will be able to use PLUP to analyse pattern of resource use; and recommend solutions to ensure sustainable land use.

Climate Change and Disaster Management is a specialization course within the Natural Disaster Risk Management Program that aims at supporting the global agenda of managing the risks associated with Climate Change. The course gives a brief introduction to the science of Climate Change, reviews the impact of Climate Change, and the trends in magnitude and frequency of climatic extremes and changes in average climatic conditions. It explores the linkages between disaster risk management and climate change adaptation and outlines strategies, methods and tools for integrated climate risk management. It reviews the causes, trends and impacts and introduces options – methods, tools - to consider for integrating Climate Change in disaster risk management. The learning materials include of slide show presentations, 30 to 35 minutes each, case studies, and readings, quizzes, a final exam, and an end of the course project.

The depletion of natural resources, the emission of greenhouse gases and the increasing amounts of waste from modern production systems are recognized as threats to the sustainability of economic development, and the quality of life of the world population. The climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit the magnitude or rate of long-term climate change. Climate change mitigation involves reductions in human (anthropogenic) emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) through introducing low carbon technology to increase energy efficiency, or changing management practices or consumer behaviour. Mitigation may also be achieved by increasing the capacity of carbon sinks, e.g., through reforestation like the current global instrument of REDD+. This course aims to increase understanding about the problem of Climate Change, policies in place to address it and Climate Change mitigation measures.

Community-based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) is to build the vulnerable people‘s capacity of coping with disaster risks and reducing their vulnerability of climate change impacts, and thereby developing safer and more resilient communities. CBDM strategies have become increasingly important in the face of global climate change, increased populations expanding into more vulnerable regions, and the heightened recognition of a need for greater linkages between top-down governmental and community level responses. This involved the change of focus from emergency response to planned activities that would mitigate or prevent disasters. Increase in disaster occurrence and disaster related loss is due to exponential increase in occurrence of small and medium scale disasters. This approach encourages directly involving vulnerable communities in planning and implementation of mitigation measures. The bottom-up approach has received wide acceptance because communities are considered the best judges of their own vulnerability and are in better position to make decisions for their well-being.