ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND GLOBAL POLITICS

The course introduces to themes of historical and contemporary relevance (such us the global environmental change, the Great Acceleration, the Anthropocene, etc.) using an interdisciplinary framework that encompasses the history of science and technology, environmental humanities, science and policy relations, and Earth governance. Thus framed, the course is generally addressed to students interested in questions that evade disciplinary boundaries and benefit from the hybridization of different approaches, methods and narratives.

The course will introduce students to a contemporary history of the global environment as an object of science and politics.
To this aim, we will explore different theories and concepts that have been promoted at the scientific, theoretical and institutional level to signify the global interconnection of all parts of the Earth with human society (Biosphere, Geosphere, Human-Earth System, Technosphere etc.) in the course of the 20th century. Students will also be introduced to the theory of the Anthropocene as an object of transdisciplinary investigation and geopolitical governance.

By the end of the course, students will learn the historical context in which the notion of a global environment emerged as a scientific and cultural theory, as well as the central narratives about when an international institutional framework to study the Earth as endangered by humankind starts to emerge in order to promote a concerted global political effort to monitor and reduce the global impact of our societies on the environment and its subsystems.

There are no pre-requisites except enthusiasm, curiosity and willingness to participate actively in class.

What is the “Global Environment” we live in and how it differs from previous and alternative notions of "environment"?
How dangerous and important has the global environment become to be considered an object not only of science but of global international politics?

The course provides an introduction to the notion of the global environment and global Earth—as an entity and a notion whose meaning has been co-produced by scientists but also institutions and state powers – to understand and address environmental factors, such as degradation of ecosystems, lands, and oceans or resource scarcity or global warming that fall outside the jurisdiction of one single community and nation but pertain to the global society and as such must be an object of planetary politics.

The first half of the course is devoted to exploring from a philosophical and historical perspectives ideas, theories and models that are preliminary to the notions of the global environment: these are primarily the concepts of the biosphere and Earth System, that started to develop in the early 20th century but consolidated in the second half of the 20th century, especially in Cold War time. These two notions encapsulate a novel scientific understanding of the Earth by describing how its parts have evolved, and how they may expect to continue to evolve on all timescales both naturally and in response to human activity. In this respect, the human factor becomes a function of the evolution of the whole Earth.

The second half of the course addresses the transnational dimension of global-environment related studies and governance by examining the work and institutional efforts of specific governmental and non-governmental programs seeking to study the global environment and the global Earth (such as the IGY, MAB, IGBP) in relation to the human impact on it and which measures and models have been promoted to set a path towards sustainability.
We will see that global environmental research has often been an object of negotiation involving governments, institutions, and scientific experts.

– The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change edited by Paul R. Samson and David Pitt
– Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer E. 2000. The “Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter (41): 17–18.
– Peter Galison, “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 21, no. 1, 1994, pp. 228–66.
– Paul Warde, Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin, The Environment. A history of the Idea, John Hopkins University Press, 2018
– Etienne Bensons, Surroundings. A History of Environments and Environmentalisms, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020
– Dalby, Simon, Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2020
– Joseph Masco, “Bad Weather”, Social Studies of Science 40/1 (February 2010) 7–40.
– National Research Council. 1986. Earth System Science: Overview: A Program for Global Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/19210 : https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/19210/chapter/2
– Giulia Rispoli and Doubravka Olsakova, “Science and Diplomacy around the Earth: From the Man and Biosphere Programme to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme”, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 50, Number 4, pps. 456–481.
– Ian Zalasiewicz et all. (2011) “The Anthropocene, a new epoch of geological time?” Philosophical transaction of the Royal society. Available at: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1938/835
– Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J. et al. The emergence and evolution of Earth System Science. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1, 54–63 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-019-0005-6
– Peter Haff, “Humans and technology in the Anthropocene: Six rules”. The Anthropocene Review, Volume 1, issue 2, 2014, 126-136.
– Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2018). IPCC Special Report “Global Warming of 1.5°C” — Summary for Teachers. Read pp. 7-22. Ignore the “School Activity”
– J. Rockström et al. Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity, Ecology & Society, 2009, Vol. 15 n: 2. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1259855

The student's grade will be based on active participation in class, a written assignment, and an oral exam at the end of the course. The written assignment is based on the submission of an abstract that illustrates the student's favorite topic of the course. This abstract will serve as a prelude to the oral exam, which will then expand on the various arguments covered in the course.

Regarding the grading, the exam will be marked on a scale ranging from 0 to 30. The minimum passing grade is 18. Honors ("lode") will be granted only for exceptional capacity of judgment and excellent knowledge of the topics under evaluation.

Teaching methods consist of frontal teaching, in-class discussions, and possibly lectures with invited guests.
The frontal lectures will introduce the main themes of the course, which is divided into two parts (see the course description).
Active participation is encouraged throughout the course; however, a couple of classes will be fully devoted to discussions with group/individual presentations based on the reading assignments.

The detailed syllabus of the weekly appointments, with all assignments, will be available to students at beginning of the course.

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