MOOC Governing Climate Change: Polycentricity in Action

The MOOC focuses on the challenge of how we can govern climate change in the 21st century, as the world rapidly becomes more complex, connected, and dynamic. This is one of the most urgent problems facing human society, and one being tackled by the Europe-wide 'INOGOV' network co-led by the Open Universiteit.

The landscape of climate change governance is in flux: no longer the exclusive focus of global negotiations, more and more actors are becoming involved in taking climate action and diverse ways. From low-carbon buildings to urban experimentation and smart cities, to transnational networks and private sector innovation, climate governance is rapidly becoming more complex and 'polycentric'. Yet our concepts of climate governance often do not yet match this emerging reality.

The course is structured in four Blocks, which correspond closely to the core textbook Governing Climate Change on which the course is based. The core textbook book was developed by the INOGOV network and published by Cambridge University Press, and is available online in fully Open Access format.

MOOC Cooperation with INOGOV

This massive open online course has been developed within the European research network INOGOV: Innovations in Climate Governance, funded by the EU COST Action programme (grant number: IS1309).

Education and research

from the Science department of the Faculty of Management, Science & Technology have been involved for several years in research into Climate Change. The MOOC initiative was led by Prof Dave Huitema, and the teachers for the course are: Dr James Patterson, Prof Dave Huitema, and Dr Judith Floor (all from the Department of Science).

The Welten Institute also contributes expertise on MOOC evaluation.