Grand Challenges for Sustainability

Course Objective

The objective of this course is to characterize a path of sustainable development and to identify the Grand Challenges that the world faces in making the transition from BAU to the SD path.

ACADEMIC SKILLS / KNOWLEDGE

• the biophysics behind global environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss; the importance of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (as agreed upon in 2012 by the UN General Assembly) for achieving sustainable development;
• the determinants of economic growth and development;
• why the management of natural resources cannot be left to the free market;
• the role of good governance, both by governments and multinational firms, for achieving sustainable development;
• whether the government can, and, if so, how the government should intervene to obtain sustainable development and how to combat poverty, climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion;
• the role of cities, in which more than half of the world population currently lives, for achieving sustainable development

RESEARCH SKILLS / QUANTITATIVE SKILLS

After successfully completing this course, you will be acquainted with theoretical and empirical methods necessary to study the relation between economic growth and the environment, the effects of market failures, the optimal management of natural resources, the potentially adverse effects of resource abundance, and the effects of different policy interventions.

BRIDGING THEORY AND PRACTICE

After successfully completing this course, you are able to select, frame and qualitatively describe a challenge in the context of sustainability that is urgent, multidisciplinary, and linked to your personal interest and to present a well-founded research proposal that is embedded in the media and the academic literature in an online pitch.

SOCIAL SKILLS

After successfully completing this course, you able to present and actively discuss themes relevant to this course.

BROADENING YOUR HORIZON

After successfully completing this course, you able to explain

• the interactions of the world economy, global society, and the natural environment that are important for sustainable development;
• why sustainable development calls for socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth.

Course Content

Sustainable development is the central challenge of our days. Currently, the Earth is inhabited by 7.8 billion people (9 times more than at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century) who together produce more than 90 billion US dollars of output (200 times more than at the start of the Industrial Revolution). Both population and output are projected to keep on growing during the next decades. Furthermore, our world is increasingly interconnected through trade, migration, technology diffusion, knowledge flows, and social networks. As a result, human influence on the Earth’s physical processes has been increasing. Nowadays, in the Anthropocene, human activity is even deemed to be the dominant influence on the Earth’s climate and natural environment.

Although two decades of economic development have brought widespread prosperity, more than a billion people are still living in extreme poverty. Moreover, by crossing planetary boundaries human activities may plunge the world into a gigantic environmental crisis caused by climate change and biodiversity loss. In order to eradicate poverty and to prevent environmental catastrophes, a transition needs to me made from the business as usual (BAU) to a sustainable development (SD) path. Making this transition requires good governance, both by governments, citizens and businesses.

The course is organized around the Sustainable Development Goals as adopted by the UN in 2015. The first week will start with a general introduction that sketches several important sustainability issues, illustrated by empirical evidence. During the course, we pay attention to the scientific as well as to the economic and societal dimensions of the identified challenges for sustainability. Furthermore, both the positive or analytical side (i.e., how to make sense of the interactions of the economy, society and the environment?) and the normative or ethical side (i.e., what should be the objectives of a well-functioning society?) of sustainable development will be discussed during the course.

The topics that will be dealt with during the course are:

1. The relation between growth and the environment;
2. Ending global poverty, education, and health;
3. Management of natural resources and planetary boundaries;
4. Climate change: climate science and environmental policies;
5. Biodiversity and land-use change;
6. Global governance.

Additional Information Teaching Methods

Lectures (with interactive elements)
Tutorials (including presentation and discussion sessions)
MOOC (to prepare at home for the lectures and tutorials)

Method of Assessment

Written exam – Individual assessment
Interim Assignments – Group assessment

Literature

Sachs, Jeffrey D., The Age of Sustainable Development, 2015, Columbia University Press, New York.

Collection of articles.