Global Governance of Planetary Challenges

Full course description

Development has detrimental effects on the natural conditions for human development around the globe. Therefore, the fourth course of specialisation, Global Governance of Development, will scrutinise the governance of partnerships launched by different International Organizations with regional, state, and local actors to address contemporary energy and climate development challenges.

We live in the era of the Anthropocene, in which humans have a profound impact on Earth. During this period of expansive industrialisation propelled by fossil fuels, humans altered dangerously and unpredictably planetary conditions and processes on which human societies depend. The deterioration of ecological conditions endangers the accomplishment of SDGs.

This course introduces the global governance institutions addressing Anthropocene challenges at the crossroads of climate change and energy transitions. During this course, students will acquire essential knowledge, analytical tools and professional skills related to the governance of Anthropocene challenges in partnerships with global, regional, national, and local actors. Planetary challenges of the Anthropocene era reflect global systemic connections and interdependencies between human activities and ecosystems. During this course, we will try to answer how planetary challenges are defined. Who has the authority to govern them in global international institutions? What are the solutions proposed, and how are they implemented? Therefore, we will study global political aspects of controversies surrounding climate and energy and their societal consequences around the globe. In this way, we will also link governance with challenges with prospects of accomplishing SDGs. Therefore, we will also introduce project management tools allowing the design of practical solutions to some aspects of planetary challenges meeting SDGs ambitions in local partnership.

During the lectures, we will introduce the essential features of the Anthropocene and the earth systems governance from the analytical perspective of Complex Social Systems and Global Regimes Complex. Using these analytical perspectives, students will understand the complexity of global environmental, climate and energy policies as an evolving system of overlapping and complementary institutions, organisations, and regimes. We will focus on the challenges and solutions related to human dependency on energy resources and how international regimes promote the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Furthermore, we will analyse international institutions and actors involved in the global governance of climate change challenges and focus on the interplay between global commitments and state processes. To understand the complexity of global planetary challenges and pathways to address them, we will simulate the developmental interdependencies through the En-ROADS-Climate Action Simulation model.

After the introductory workshop on project management in International Organizations, during tutorials, we will also initiate the assemblage of a project proposal contributing to tackling climate change challenges by defining the problem we want to tackle. We will continue our project design trajectory during the following two tutorials and focus on relevant stakeholders and project objectives. After the introductory workshop, we will develop the theory of change and a plan for problem-solving actions during two tutorials and learn how to conceptualise and measure appropriate indicators. We will also learn about various tools (briefs, blogs, podcasts) to disseminate our proposed project solutions and policy recommendations.

Finally, during this course, we will discover practical examples of dealing with regional, national, and local planetary challenges. We will meet practitioners from international institutions to learn about their everyday work of policy design, implementation, and evaluation.