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Global Environmental Governance (STG-MA-ECR-GEG)

STG-MA-ECR-GEG

Description

This course is designed for students who wish to gain a thorough theoretical and empirical understanding of the fundamental concepts and processes related to global environmental governance. The content of the course will build upon the first year MTnG courses on the foundations and tools of transnational governance and elaborate on some of the most topical “global commons” problems: climate change and biodiversity loss.

Transnational governance is crucial in addressing the global, national and local causes and impacts of climate change effects and biodiversity loss. Moreover, both these policy areas are sites of extensive transnational action, involving a diverse group of national and local governments, international organisations, the private sector, NGOs and other social actors, alongside state actors. The course will critically assess transnational decision-making and negotiation processes taking place at various levels (local, national, regional or international), both formally and informally.

In respect of biodiversity, the course will explore the goals of networked biodiversity governance, its goals, and the tensions and complexities associated with tackling this multifaceted transnational problem. Against this backdrop, it will then explore three instruments of transnational governance in more depth: the Convention on Biodiversity; the CITES treaty; and the Habitats Directive.

With respect to climate change governance, the course will analyse the mechanisms and processes designed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement (2015), as well as the role of and interactions between transnational, national, and subnational climate governance efforts. We will explore key actors and governance strategies in the realm of mitigation and adaptation governance, with a particular focus on adaptation finance and the adoption of the Loss and Damage fund and what it means for transnational climate action. The course will foster a better understanding of how climate change governance has evolved as a focal issue of international politics, the inter-state cooperation/divides, and evolving tensions between developed and developing economies. 
 

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