Program Structure

Students are required to take 4 courses. Courses start in September, January, and May, and run over the semester. Selected courses are offered each semester.

Requirements for the Graduate Diploma in Climate Risk Assessment and Opportunity can be fulfilled in:

• 4 Semesters (16 months), assuming one course is taken each semester
• 6 Semesters (24 months), assuming two courses are taken each year

Courses:

Multidisciplinary Concepts of Climate Risk

Delivery model - asynchronous

This course will cover the basic fundamentals of climate risk and climate change targeted to students of all disciplines. It will be structured more towards the basic understanding and science behind climate change. This course will also tackle an interdisciplinary approach to climate risk. It will focus on the breadth of climate risk in relation to Engineering, Science, Social Science, and Business, and how these fields work together to tackle the larger problem of climate risk and climate change. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand the complexity of climate risk, including the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to tackle climate risk issues.

Embedding Climate Strategies in Business

Delivery model - synchronous and asynchronous

Competitive advantage can be rooted in new capabilities related to net-zero, and other aspects of the environmental and social bottom lines. Taking the perspective of general managers, we will confront difficult challenges, scientific uncertainty, and new opportunities. Overall, the course is designed to deepen your understanding of value creation, value delivery and value capture that are central to business strategy; to map a number of the complex and evolving interactions between business and society along the supply chain; and to delve into promising sources of improved competitiveness.

ESG In-Action

Delivery model - synchronous and asynchronous

Climate risk is a financial risk. While there is variability in the degree to which climate risk presents in the economic fundamentals of corporations, climate risk is so pervasive and endemic a risk, that no corporation can avoid it. With the realization that climate change threatens the long-term viability of corporations, large institutional investors and asset managers – organizations and institutions that control a large percentage of the world’s biggest businesses – have mobilized in recent years. The pressure that these institutions exert on boards of directors and the corporate governance ecosystem more broadly, is critically important to effecting change in the strategic direction of corporations.

Finance for Climate

Delivery model - synchronous and asynchronous

In Canada (and globally), innovative financial instruments offer exciting potential to help build thriving and healthy ecosystems and communities. When successful, such investment vehicles enable investors to:

• Generate profits. 
• Address societal challenges.
• Strengthen collective governance through multi-stakeholder partnerships; and,
• Ensure a more efficient public and private money use by sharing risks and implementing specific incentive and measurement systems. 

However, the same financial instruments can have the opposite effect when poorly designed. It is, therefore, of primary importance to understand the mechanisms of success and failure of these new financial practices.