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 has the objective to introduce students without an economic background to the economic approaches that can be used to address and solve global challenges. 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.

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.

Knowledge and understanding
Understanding global change, sustainability and climate change
Understanding the economic dimension of environmental problems and climate change
Understanding how the different dimensions of sustainability interact
Understanding how social-ecological systems work and can be managed
Understanding of how environmental policies work, with particular attention to climate mitigation and adaptation policies
Knowledge of the history of environmental policy

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
Identify sources of knowledge and reliable data sources to develop critical reflections on assigned or chosen topics regarding environmental issues and related policies

Judgment skills
Know how to formulate one's own critical vision on assigned or chosen topics regarding environmental issues and related policies

Communication skills
Knowing how to share in a group and discuss one's own critical vision on assigned or chosen topics regarding environmental issues and related policies

There are no prerequisites for attending this course.

The first part of the course will present a critical discussion of the major global challenges that require global action. Questions such as How did we become a force of nature? What are the links between the economy and the environment? What are the approaches to sustainability? Why is climate change getting so much attention? The second part of the course will introduce the basic theory of economic approaches to global challenges and policies. It will review the history of environmental and climate change economics. It will explain why global challenges are often global public goods that require international coordination and policy action. The course will introduce some of the economic approaches that can be used to think about social-ecological systems: game theory, strategic interaction, Ostrom's framework. The course will also explain the policy instruments available to address global challenges and review the historical development of major international environmental agreements.

1. Global change and global challenges
2. Historical overview of the sustainability concept
3. Principles and approaches to global changes and sustainability: the case of climate change
4. Climate responses: mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development
5. Climate adaptation lab
6. SDG and climate policy lab
7. How Economics can save the world
8. Environmental policy principles and economic approaches to global changes and sustainability
9. Solutions to common goods: Ostrom’s approach
10. Implementing Ostrom’s approach lab
11. Solutions to global public goods: IEAs
12. IEA lab
13. Solutions to externalities: PIs
14. PI lab
15. Recap and wrap up

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.
Angner, Erin (2023) How economics can save the world. Introduction, Chapter 3, Chapter 9, Chapter 10 (available from the instructor on moodle).
Ostrom, Ellinor (1990) Governing the Commons, Cambridge (selected chapters, available from the instructor on moodle).
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 on moodle.

Oral exam. The oral exam will begin with an individual oral presentation by each student on a project theyr can develop in a group. Groups can count 3-4 students but then each student presents individually. The individual presentation of the group project will be followed by individual oral questions.
Presentation: 5 minutes; Questions: 10-15 minutes. The topics available for the final project include:
1. Climate adaptation
2. SDGs and climate policies
3. The Ostrom approach
4. IEAs
5. Environmental policy instruments
Questions will cover the topics addressed in the lectures and in the material available on moodle.

Grading:
30L: excellent knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; excellent understanding of the question; excellent ability to summarise evidence from the literature; ability to articulate a critical assessment of existing literature; excellent communicative oral skills.
30: excellent knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; excellent understanding of the question; excellent ability to summarise evidence from the literature; excellent communicative oral skills.
27-29: very good knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; very good understanding of the question; very good ability to summarise evidence from the literature; very good communicative oral skills.
24-26: good knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; good understanding of the question; good ability to summarise evidence from the literature; good communicative oral skills.
18-23: good knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; fair understanding of the question; fair ability to summarise evidence from the literature; fair communicative oral skills.
Insufficient: patchy/incomplete knowledge of the concepts and subject matter of the question; fair understanding of the question; insufficient ability to summarise evidence from the literature.

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