Global environmental change is one of the great challenges humankind is facing today. Scientists today see mounting evidence that the entire earth system now operates well outside the normal state exhibited over the past 500,000 years, and that human activity is generating change that extends well beyond natural variability - in some cases, alarmingly so - and at rates that continue to accelerate.
The perennial question from a social science perspective, and the topic of this course, is how to organise the co-evolution of societies and their surrounding environment, in other words, how to develop effective and equitable governance solutions for today's global problems.The course "The Challenge of Global Environmental Governance" will help students to address this daunting task. This course will use core concepts of political science and International Relations to further our understanding of the current global environmental crisis and its solutions.
At the same time, students will be made aware of the current state of research within the field of global environmental governance.In particular, the course further investigates three profound transformation in global environmental governance: the increasing diversity of agency (i.e. the observation that authority to govern is vested not only in governments and public actors but in a host of non-state actors as well); the institutionalization of novel governance mechanisms and instruments beyond international agreements (e.g. private certification schemes in global forest politics); and finally, the increased fragmentation of global environmental governance into a number of functionally interlinked but increasingly conflictive policy domains (e.g. the potential overlap between climate change and biodiversity governance).
For each type of empirical transformation discussed above, a selection of important examples will be analysed. The course encourages students to investigate both the effectiveness of novel governance solutions as well as their implications for core social science concepts such as democratic legitimacy and accountability.
Period
16-07-2011 - 13-08-2011 (4 weeks)
Target group
The course is designed for all students interested in global environmental issues, ranging from climate change to biodiversity and forest protection, and politics. Students with a social science background and those without such a background but with a profound interest in environmental questions, in particular those related to the international and global level, are encouraged to register. The course will bring together students with diverse cultural, regional as well as academic backgrounds.
Course aim
see course description
Credits
4.0 ECTS credits GRADING Active participation in class 25%Presentation (powerpoint) in class, 15 min (35%) Written summary of one global environmental challenge of your choice (15%) Final take home paper of about 1000 words (25%)
Course fee
EUR 800 Tuition
EUR 250 Program fee
Course leader
Dr. Philipp Pattberg
Freie Universitat Berlin FUBiS
Address: Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26
Postal code: 14195
City: Berlin
Country: Germany
Website: http://www.fubis.org/
E-mail: fubis@fubis.org
Phone: +49 + 30 + 838 73472
Global Environmental Change: The Challenge of Effective and Legitimate Governance
