Elective Courses

The course has two aims. In the carbon accounting section, it aims to provide students with an understanding of the range of measurement, calculation, reporting and auditing - in short, accounting - requirements and challenges related to climate change and the policy responses to climate change. Students will come away from the course with the skills to both implement and critique carbon accounting methods. In the ESG section, ESG investing provides participants with the experience, tools and community of practice they will need to become an important part of this global paradigm. Through a combination of lecture, discussion and group exercises, participants will learn about financially material Environmental Social Governance (ESG) indicators and data providers, and learn how to translate corporate performance on sustainability into financial performance. They will also review best practices in ESG and impact investing, and develop their own sustainable investment strategies. Participants will leave this course with concrete ideas about how to incorporate sustainable investment practices within their organizations.

Remote sensing from satellite platforms has become increasingly important as the only way to obtain environmental data at the spatial and temporal coverage needed to understand the processes governing global climate change. The aim of this course is to explore the role of remote sensing in monitoring planetary scale phenomena, with particular focus on the use of techniques and instruments designed to monitor the global environmental properties of the Earth. The course will also consider the significance of these measurements for testing existing models, such as ozone depletion, the hydrological cycle, global climate change and other aspects of the Earth's environment.

The course provide students with an understanding of principal concepts emerging within the financial sector to taken climate change into account in decision-making and portfolio management. Across both public and private sector financial actors, two principal areas of focus are the management of risks and opportunities associated with climate change and the alignment of assets and portfolios with climate goals agreed by governments. The application and implementation of these management strategies, in turn, is highly dependent different types of forward-looking assessments such as scenarios, forecasting and modelling. The course develops practical knowledge for implementing these practices. Students will develop the critical thinking skills to evaluate whether emerging practices are fit for purpose for use by different financial actors (banking, asset management, institutional investors) as well as for different mandates (impact-driven versus maximising financial returns).

This course is a comprehensive course that provides foundational, theoretical, and practical knowledge and skills in the field of climate change and its impact on public health. The course prepares participants to be knowledgeable in climate change principles and implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies. By looking at air quality, nutrition, infectious diseases, and human migration, this course will show students how increases in greenhouse gases impact public health. Experts working in a variety of settings will present their recommendations for responding to these challenges, and interested students will have the opportunity to learn about the research methods that measure the health effects of climate change. Created with support from the HKU School of Public Health, this course will explain how climate change impacts people around the globe, but also how it directly affects you and your life. Though the risk rises with the rising global temperatures, climate change is a solvable problem, and there are things you can do to mitigate that risk.

This course addresses the process of climate law formation by interactions between movement-building, the private sector, and government law-writing, with a particular focus on equity and just transition concepts affecting the formation of law. The course considers how litigation is one tool among many involved in the formation of climate law. It investigates the political and organizing forces that create the law, and the way lawyers (including students) might work with them. It starts with the interactions between litigation, legislation, and political negotiation and then builds to more specific climate law examples. The course is intended to be complementary to Climate Change Litigation: Practice and Theory.

The concepts of urban sustainability are driving the regulation of the built form of our increasingly large, complex and smart cities. The global sustainable development goals have also led urban regulators to embrace more participatory and innovative forms of governance for our society and economy. This course explores how those concepts apply in the regulation of planning and construction and the framework and governance for the development of smart, resilient and sustainable cities. In particular, it will focus on the role of local policies in achieving livable communities. The course will cover the Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESD) Local Planning Policies and consider whether planning regulation in Hong Kong incorporates best practice in environmental assessment. It will explore the interesting tension between building and planning law and the respective contribution of each in driving sustainable outcomes. Another component of this course will follow the introduction of building information modelling (BIM) arising out of the architecture, engineering and construction management sectors. This topic offers a further but alternate perspective of shifting regulatory dynamics that pitch towards sustainability objectives, whether on built environment projects or across broad-scaled applications.