Program Overview

Program Overview

The Governance of Risk and Resources Master's program is a continuing education, fee-based course offered by the Heidelberg Centre for Latin America (HCLA) in Santiago de Chile. This interdisciplinary academic program focuses on intersecting topics associated with natural sciences, economics, and social sciences.

Program Structure

The program is divided into a compulsory component and a compulsory elective component, concluding with a Master's thesis. The compulsory component includes the following courses:

• Governance of human-environment relations in theory and practice: Introduces theories of governance research, current theoretical perspectives on human-environment relations, and related policy areas.
• Resource governance: Teaches basic theoretical concepts for assessing and evaluating natural and economic resources, contrasting political-economic approaches to resource management with political-ecological approaches to resource justice.
• Risk governance: Imparts knowledge of scientific methods for assessing and modeling natural, social, and economic risks and their social and environmental consequences.
• Research Methods: Introduces questions of scientific theory, network analysis, geoinformatics, and statistics, practicing the application of related research methods and evaluation techniques on selected topics.
• Student Research Project: Follows the course of a scientific research project in its individual phases, imparting competence for independent and project-related research.

Compulsory Elective Component

All students must complete the modules of the elective course, with choices between different courses within each module. These modules aim to deepen students' understanding of conceptual debates in the natural and social sciences and evaluate existing governance practices through case-based analysis. Topics include:

• Sustainable use of natural resources
• Management of environmental and social crises
• Energy and water management
• Climatic and seismic risks

Master's Thesis

In the Master's thesis, students deal with an independently selected scientific problem, which must be presented and discussed in a subsequent colloquium.

Facts and Formalities

• Degree: Master of Science
• Type of programme: Continuing
• Start of programme: Summer semester only
• Standard period of study: 3 semesters
• Language(s) of instruction: Spanish and English
• Fees and contributions: 2,500.00 € / Semester
• Application procedure: Continuing-education master’s programmes, Governance of Risk and Resources
• Application deadlines: Information about deadlines can be obtained after putting together a degree program.
• International degree program: Yes

Program Description

Natural disasters hit societies unprepared, and conflicts over access to scarce natural resources are increasing worldwide. Students in the ‘Governance of Risk and Resources’ program learn how and why nation-states fail in dealing with human-environmental problems in a hierarchically regulated manner, and where alternative, more participatory forms of coordinated collective action are promising, particularly at the sub-national, regional, and local levels. The program empowers actors in society to collectively find solutions to human-environmental problems, bear them together, and steer themselves in the process. Students are trained to recognize and master the diverse context-specific challenges involved in implementing risk and resource governance.