GLOBAL CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY

This course will introduce the major global challenges of our time, with a focus on sustainability, sustainable development, and climate change, the challenge that more than anything else requires global actions and a global change. The course is targeted at students without economic background, but the economic approaches to global challenges will be introduced and used throughout the course. Students will understand why the environment is an economic resource and why economic tools and concepts can help achieve a better management of environmental resources and facilitate the transition towards a more sustainable future. Students will learn how to frame sustainability within the boundaries set by the planetary ecological ceilings and the basic social needs. They will learn why and how environmental policies can move the society and the economy towards a more sustainable path. Case studies and examples will be used to illustrate the types of policies that can be used at national and international level, and how national and sub-national interests can affect the ability to put these policies into practice. Climate change will be explored in more detail as an example of an international environmental problem. The course will give hunces on how to align global change with sustainability.

Students will learn how to conduct research of data and of sources to examine, measure, and monitor sustainability and climate change policies. They will acquire the ability to apply their knowledge to critically evaluate environmental issues from an economic viewpoint and the related policies. These skills will be acquired through frontal lectures and group discussions and activities.

Expected outcomes:
Understanding of global change, sustainability, and climate change
Understanding of the economic dimension of environmental problems and of climate change
Understanding of how different dimensions of sustainability interact
Understanding of how socio-ecological systems operate and can be managed
Understanding of how environmental policies work, with specific attention at climate mitigation and adaptation policies
Understanding of the history of environmental policy

No prerequisites in economics are required.

The first part of the course will present a critical discussion of the major global challenges calling for global actions. It will discuss questions such as: How did we became a force of nature? What are the links between the economy and the environment? What are the approaches to sustainability? Why climate change is receiving so much attention?
The second part of the course will introduce the basic theory of the economic approaches to global challenges and actions. It will review the history of environmental and climate change economics. It will explain why global challenges are often global public goods calling for international coordination and policy actions. The course will also introduce some of the economic approaches that can be used to think about social-ecological systems: game theory, strategic interaction, and Ostrom’s framework. The third part will explain the policy instruments available to address global challenges and will review the historical development of major international environmental agreements.
The course will end with evidence on the EU climate policy making. Economic and non-economic approaches, such as commoning, will be applied to climate change adaptation in the final project.

Textbooks
Barrett Scott (2001). Environment & Statecraft. The strategy of environmental treaty-making. Oxford University Press, selected chapters. Available at BEC.
Barrett, Scott (2007). Why cooperate? The incentive to supply global public goods. Oxford university press. Available at BEC.
Erik Angner, How economics can save the world. Introduction and Chapter 9 (available from the instructor).
Ellinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons, Cambridge (selected chapters, available from the instructor).
The Core Team. The Economy. Chapters 4, 12, 20. Freely available at https://www.core-econ.org/the-economy/
The Core Team. ECONOMY, SOCIETY, AND PUBLIC POLICY. Chapters 2, 4. Freely available at https://www.core-econ.org/espp/
Additional lectures are indicated in the extended syllabus available in moodle.

Oral exam. Students give an individual presentation on a final project that can be develop in groups of 3/4 students.

Frontal lecture, group discussion.

English

Moodle will be the main tool of communication for the course. All students are encouraged to sign in.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Climate change and energy" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development