Advanced Diploma in Climate Change and Just Transitions

CLASS 1: Social metabolism: genealogy, debates and applications

Teacher: Rodolfo Oliveros Espinosa 

Conceptual summary of the class

The concept of social metabolism is a central tool for analyzing the organization and production of nature by capital, as well as the socio-environmental problems and conflicts it generates. Social metabolism, broadly speaking, refers to the material circulation or flow between nature and society as a long-term, co-evolutionary process based on the principle of double determination, emphasizing the material conditions of social reproduction. In this sense, we can affirm that each society has had a particular configuration of its metabolism. Capitalist society constantly produces a gap between the system of social needs and the system of productive capacities, which in turn produces an artificial relative scarcity, generating a gap or fracture in the social metabolism that manifests itself in the various socio-environmental problems we face as a society. That is why the objective of this session is to focus on analyzing the importance of the concept of social metabolism for environmental analysis, its evolution in the history of critical thought and some of the theoretical currents that have recovered it, as well as its applications for the analysis of socio-environmental problems within the framework of capitalism.

CLASS 2: Political Ecology: theoretical and methodological principles

Teacher: Edgar Isch López

Conceptual summary of the class

Ecology, as a scientific discipline, offers an ideal framework for understanding the complex relationships between human beings and nature. As a science in development, it allows for the generation of new interpretations of socio-environmental reality. In this sense, the contribution of Political Ecology stands out, helping us understand and envision future scenarios in which the “critical” actions of human beings must prevail, considering that we have no other planet to go to; Earth is our only home. This class will offer a brief historical overview of the development of “ecologies,” based on the contributions of various authors positioned within a “critical political ecology.” Subsequently, an exercise will be conducted to promote reflection and encourage participants to become agents of change by adopting research strategies in this field. This approach implies a conscious effort to connect with reality, especially through the analysis of contemporary socio-environmental conflicts and the specific contexts of the course participants.

CLASS 3: Community and territorial feminisms in Abya Yala

Teachers: Aline Hernandez and Patricia Binkowski

Conceptual summary of the class

This class aims to present the epistemic proposal of Abya Yala's community and territorial feminism, positioning it as a countercolonial cosmic-political paradigm. The class questions and problematizes the development paradigm of Modernity and seeks to situate Abya Yala's community and territorial feminism, its contexts of enunciation, its main theoretical and decolonizing practices, challenging the neoliberal development paradigm. It seeks to experiment with productions that align ethically and politically with the epistemic proposal of community and territorial feminism and its countercolonial repercussions for the scientific and political fields. Central concepts to be discussed and addressed include: countercolonial epistemes in opposition to the neoliberal development paradigm; conflicts; territory-body-land; politics of affirmation; sustainable development; social movements and collective action; the Anthropocene and Capitalocene; and Biocultural Memory.

CLASS 1: Climate change from a Caribbean perspective

Teacher: Jaqueline Laguardia

Conceptual summary of the class 

Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean face numerous challenges in their efforts to build more prosperous, inclusive, and equitable societies. Among these, high environmental and climate vulnerability stands out. The region's territories suffer from ocean acidification, rising sea levels, and an increased likelihood of coastal flooding and intense cyclones—events with adverse implications for ecosystems, communities, and infrastructure. This class will address the effects of climate change in the Caribbean and the strategies and policies adopted to mitigate its effects and adapt to the changes it brings.

CLASS 2: Latin American climate modeling for decision making

Teacher: César Diego Chimal 

Conceptual summary of the class 

The session aims to familiarize students with the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for modeling regional climate change (temperature) scenarios in Latin America, using freely available online software tools and country-specific databases (Mexico). It will also explain what climate change scenarios are and their purpose in the social sciences, visualize scenarios using the UNIATMOS platform (UNAM), and guide participants in using QGIS to develop their own regional climate change scenarios.

CLASS 3: Gender and climate change: approaches from a cultural perspective

Teacher: Maria Virginia Avila 

Conceptual summary of the class  

The intersection of climate change, gender, and the cultural sector challenges us to consider the role that cultural agents should assume. The tasks of raising awareness, disseminating information, and promoting understanding are closely aligned with the experiences of their disciplines or artistic languages. Through the intervention of artists, cultural collectives, and organizations, certain ecological and distributive conflicts have managed to enter the public agenda and give voice to resistance movements. However, much remains to be explored regarding the established processes and modes of relationship that involve cultural industries, heritage, and the training of their agents. The urgency of the climate crisis, with its differentiated responsibilities, accelerates the transformation of a civilizational matrix in crisis, a product of multiple forms of violence inflicted upon bodies and nature. The cultural sector is not exempt from these dynamics and its imperative territorially situated deconstruction.

CLASS 1: Critical approaches to the notion of “energy poverty”

Teacher: Urphy Vasquez Baca

Conceptual summary of the class 

This class addresses the concepts of energy poverty, rural electrification, and energy inclusion linked to territory, poverty, and climate change. The class will adopt a multidimensional, systemic, multi-scalar, and interdisciplinary approach. It will also define conceptual frameworks for energy transitions from the perspective of political ecology, focusing on democratization, justice, and climate resilience. In this regard, various case studies of neo-extractivist and colonial energy transitions will be discussed, contrasting them with socio-ecological, just, and democratic energy transitions. Furthermore, the class will review the currents and narratives surrounding so-called “green and carbon-neutral economies” and how these redirect capitalist extractivist development models from the Global North toward the Global South. Finally, the class will critically and constructively analyze and discuss alternative solutions for influencing public policy based on the generation of scientific evidence regarding energy poverty and socio-ecological energy transitions in the Latin American context.

CLASS 2: From the "Commodities Consensus" to the "Decarbonization Consensus"

Teacher: Tamara Hartaker 

Conceptual summary of the class

The exacerbation of climate change's impacts has generated a global consensus regarding the need to decarbonize the economy and transition to cleaner energy sources. While the notion of energy transition initially seems positive, the advancement of renewable energy megaprojects and their increasing socio-environmental costs raise the question of whether they truly constitute an environmentally and socially sustainable alternative. This lecture aims to problematize the idea of ​​energy transition through the analysis of several case studies, based on Breno Brigel and Maristella Svampa's concept of the shift from the "Commodities Consensus" to the "Decarbonization Consensus."

CLASS 3: Territorial governance and social metabolism

Teacher: Antonio De Lisio 

Conceptual summary of the class: 

This session aims to foster an understanding of social metabolism centered on the virtuous cycle of territorial governance, thereby valuing local opportunities for sustainable production and consumption. This serves as the foundation for a decentralized, productive, and sustainable economy, leveraging local products specific to each community. These production and consumption protocols, as described by Víctor Toledo (2013), are linked to the different phases of human societies' use of nature: appropriation (A), transformation (T), distribution (D), consumption (C), and excretion (E). These are the phases that must be articulated in each community to promote a just energy transition, supported more by the endogenous sector of the economy, coupled with ecosystem functions and social inclusion, thus overcoming the... business as usual extractivist policies that are being fostered by the ecological and social Prebisch, which mortgage the future of the various countries in the region.

CLASS 1: Ancient narratives about humanity, time, and the world

Teacher: Eduardo A. Rueda 

Conceptual summary of the class 

This class addresses the worldview, ethical, and epistemic foundations, and their practical and political implications, of what, following De la Cadena and Stengers, we might call original cosmopolitics. It is of particular interest to explore, especially through the work of Stengers and Dussel, how these cosmopolitics transfigure, deepen, refine, and expand the very project of modernity. Thus, the aim is to recognize, in this way, the utopian, potentially universalist, and yet territorially grounded configuration of a cosmopolitical modernity founded on ancestral knowledge. Following this path will allow us to see more clearly the foundations and scope of the so-called rights of nature and their civilizational projection. This projection will be best understood by examining, panoramically, the points of convergence and divergence with what Gudynas calls biocentrism. Ultimately, and against the backdrop of the very specific struggles of Indigenous peoples for a viable future for all (not just for themselves), the aim is to show how these struggles themselves embody just purposes and visions for the future of all humanity. The objectives of the class include: a) Identifying the conceptual links and practical implications between cosmopolitics, epistemic justice, the rights of nature, and environmental justice; b) Recognizing the foundations of the rights of nature, and their points of convergence and divergence with biocentrism; c) Critically appropriating the emancipatory scope of the rights of nature in Latin America and the Caribbean against the backdrop of the socio-environmental problems faced by Indigenous peoples.

CLASS 2: Peasant epistemologies of good living

Teacher: Luan Gomez

Conceptual summary of the class 

The main objective of this class is to discuss the idea of ​​epistemicide caused by an extractive and colonial development model, which has brought the disappearance of traditional peasant knowledge to the forefront of the debate. This disappearance is due to the hegemony of the prevailing narrative, aiming to identify popular or traditional practices and/or knowledge that, throughout modernity, established agriculture as a way of life, especially for the rural population of Latin America. This objective unfolds by mapping peasants' experiences in relation to winter and drought forecasts and the use of plants as medicine, as a business, or as a mode of imperial economics. This session seeks to understand both peasant perceptions of climate change and the changes resulting from the modernization of the countryside and industrialized agriculture. The didactic approach will therefore be guided by participatory research, taking coexistence, creation, and lived experience as key elements in order to give visibility to knowledge from an epistemological and political perspective of coexistence with the semi-arid region, as a practice of good living. This reflection seeks to understand how traditional knowledge became ways of supporting agroecology, as a science and policy for life.

CLASS 3: The Amazon: governance, crisis and future paths 

Teacher: Pedro Roberto Jacobi

Conceptual summary of the class

The Amazon is one of the most important ecosystems for Latin America and the world, due to its contribution to global climate and environmental stability, as well as the various governmental and corporate interests at stake. In this context, the purpose of this course is to understand the complexity that characterizes the Amazon, highlighting its importance and the associated strategic disputes. It will address the different actors involved and their respective projects, which compete for control of this vast ecosystem, ranging from preservation initiatives to those aimed at exploiting its resources.

CLASS 1: Environmental courts: definition, operation and examples

Teacher: Carlos Antonio Martín Soria Dall'Orso

Conceptual summary of the class 

This course presents an overview of environmental court models worldwide, reflecting on the contribution of this instrument to environmental management, its use by citizens, and its role in developing more complex levels of environmental policy. The diverse nature of legal systems around the world (civil, common law, and others), the diversity of state organizations (federal, republican, parliamentary monarchy, and others), and other historical, political, economic, and social factors can explain the state of development of a given public policy or legal institution in a country. In the case of environmental courts, comparative law analysis of the establishment of tribunals that deal with environmental matters reveals a diversity of subjects of study that are often difficult to compare, but which share similar elements, while also possessing unique design features. To overcome the problems and challenges of a fragmented judicial system that failed to respond efficiently and effectively to the needs of environmental cases, legal systems have adopted one of three models to create a specialized one-stop shop for addressing the challenges of interpreting the law in environmental management. This course reviews these models and presents a phenomenology of the experiences in establishing these tribunals, the mechanisms and tools used in their implementation, and examines how citizens access these tribunals in some landmark cases.

CLASS 2: The Escazú Agreement as a tool for access to environmental justice in Latin America and the Caribbean

Teacher: Mariana Blanco 

Conceptual summary of the class 

The purpose of this class is to introduce students to the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, also known as the Escazú Agreement. During the session, key questions will be addressed, such as: What is it? What problems does it address? What are its characteristics? What are its pillars? And finally, what are the next steps for its effective implementation? The Escazú Agreement is the first legally binding regional agreement on environmental matters specifically for the Latin America and Caribbean region, making it an essential tool that specialists and the general public should be familiar with.

CLASS 3: Climate litigation in Latin America and the Caribbean: scope and limits

Teacher: Maritza Islas Vargas

Conceptual summary of the class

Faced with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, climate litigation is emerging as an alternative to curb the actions of governments and corporations that exacerbate the climate emergency. However, structural inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the region's role as a supplier of raw materials in the international market, pose serious obstacles for both climate action and climate activists. In this context, the course aims to introduce students to the various dimensions of environmental and climate justice as a prelude to discussing the importance and scope of climate litigation as a strategy for action and as a mechanism for achieving climate justice. Key definitions for understanding climate litigation will be addressed, along with experiences of its application in other countries, and the challenges and ongoing initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean.

You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here. hereTo access the registration form, you must click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma you are interested in.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in April and will conclude in July 2025.

Del 9 al 13 de junio de 2025 Our X Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences in Bogotá, Colombia. #CLACSO2025 (more information here). In order to ensure everyone's participation, we have planned a break from training activities during that week.

All registered participants will receive, on the first day of activities, the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography, and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.

Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected] 

 You must write an email with the request to [email protected] We will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.

Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases and within the first 20 days of starting the Higher Diploma, the student may write to [email protected] Requesting withdrawal and stating the reasons. After the case is evaluated, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Higher Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.

Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.

Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.

You can check if you belong to a member center here: 

https://www.clacso.org/institucional/centros-asociados/

The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.