ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

According to the general training objectives of the Master Degree in Environmental Sciences, the course contributes to provide the knowledge for evaluating environmental resources and formulating hypotheses for their management, planning and conservation, including the integration of environmental issues within regulatory systems and economic paradigms.
With reference to the specific training objectives of the Master Degree in Environmental Sciences, the course contributes to: 1) provide in-depth knowledge aimed at the application and development of methodologies for the assessment and management of environmental sustainability; 2) provide a systemic and integrated view of both environmental and economic dynamics, with the aim to allow the graduates to address holistically the challenges posed by managing the environment in the context of sustainable development; 3) train graduates able to operate in specific professional fields also at different scales of investigation and intervention for the resolution of environmental problems both locally and globally.

Knowledge and understanding
The student will acquire scientific knowledge on methodologies for decision support and for the evaluation of environmental quality through indicators as well as on methodologies and tools for the assessment and management of environmental sustainability.

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
The student will acquire specific skills concerning decision support in the design phase of good and services’ production towards environmental sustainability and on the implementation of environmental sustainability in the assessment and management of environmental resources, industrial products and technologies.

Autonomy of judgment
The student will acquire independent judgment on environmental issues and on assessing the quality of environmental data associated with them, and will know how to identify the most suitable environmental tools for assessing and managing environmental sustainability in specific contexts.

Communication skills
The student will acquire communication skills by using the basic linguistic terminology in all the processes of application and communication of the acquired knowledge. He/she will have the ability to properly communicate verbally and in writing to both experts and the general public both in Italian and in English, by means also of multimedia tools.

Learning ability
The student will acquire the ability to formulate and argue simple hypotheses, by also developing a critical approach to the evaluation of alternative hypotheses. He/she will learn how to interact with peers and with the tutor, in a critical and respectful way. He/she will be able to consult critically the reference books/papers and the bibliography included in them. He/she will know how to use dedicated tools.

Basics of methods and tools for Environmental Impact Assessment (see the syllabus of Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment, planned for the third year of the Bachelor Degree in Environmental Sciences).

The course will address the historical development of “sustainable development”, “sustainability” and “environmental sustainability” concepts, from the adoption of Rio’s principle, through the implementation of Agenda 21 and, most recently, Agenda 2030. Implementation strategies of the EU Green Deal and Circular Economy will also be introduced.
The presentation of tools for assessing environmental sustainability such as Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Footprints (Carbon Footprint, Water Footprint) and Risk Assessment will follow.
The application of such tools will be deepened by means of discussion of specific case studies (with presentations and discussion of peer-reviewed scientific papers by the students and with the visit to ECOMONDO) and by providing an introduction to OpenLCA.
Finally, how the LCA tool could be complemented by other tools such as Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social LCA (S-LCA), toward sustainable development (Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment), will be discussed.

Compulsory:
Slides presented by the teacher and scientific publications made available by the teacher in the Moodle platform.

Written exam consisting of 3 open questions to be answered in 2 hours (max 8 points each; 8=excellent; 7=very good; 6=good; 4.5=sufficient; 3.5=poor; 2=bad).
Evaluation of ppt presentations on specific topics prepared and presented by students during the course and discussions on real cases (max 5 points; of which max 2 for correctness; max 2 for clarity; max 1 for duration of the presentation compared to the assigned minutes).
Visit to ECOMONDO and related discussion (max 3 points).

Lectures.
Practical excercises.
Students’ working groups and presentations/discussions on specific topics.

Italian

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Natural capital and environmental quality" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development