Politics of the Earth

Course goals

1. explain key concepts such as governance, power and politics, institutions, and discourses, and apply these concepts to cases of local, national, regional, and global environmental governance;
2. analytically assess different environmental discourses and explain how these shape interests of a multitude of actors and their political positions concerning environmental issues;
3. explain and critically reflect on key structural and functional characteristics of governance arrangements at local, national, regional, and global levels, and the role of key actors and institutions within multi-level environmental governance;
4. analyse policies on a sustainability problem and make evidence-based policy advice to a decision-maker in the form of a policy brief; and
5. propose and analyse an array of governance reform options, justify the selected options, predict their likely effects, and explain ways to address any unintended consequences.

Content

Humans have always modified their surrounding environment. We now know that some of these anthropogenic environmental changes pose threat to the integrity of the Earth’s ecosystems. However, we often fail to come to consensus on what counts as undesirable environmental change, the causes and consequences, how to address them, and why certain solutions might be more desirable than others. Any response to these questions is inherently and deeply political. That is because addressing them asks for societal decision making. Some people have more influence in decision-making processes than others. People may also have different interests. Some people have a bigger impact on the environment and consequent problems affect peoples and organisms differently across space and time. In the face of the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch in which human activities have a significant planetary impact on the functioning of the Earth system as a whole, there is an ever-increasing need to enable and steer collective action, or to reorganize and transform our societies and economies in such a way that they do not harm the environment. 

In this course, we consider environmental issues as a challenge of and for governance. The course introduces you to political aspects of anthropogenic environmental change at and across various levels of social organization. It offers a survey of the complex historical and institutional terrain in which environmental change is problematized and tackled, as well as the political and governance processes related to sustainability issues.

At the core of the course are nine ‘storytelling’ lectures that draw on a diverse range of real-world examples, aided by various audio-visual materials. The introductory lecture explores what the politics of the Earth is about and why we study it. The three lectures that follow expose you to the politics of science and the legalization of politics, the different ways in which we define, frame, and communicate environmental problems, and some of the key research questions of ‘Earth system governance’. These lectures on key tools, ideas, and concepts are followed by a series of problem-oriented lectures that focus on different issue areas such as climate, ocean, water, and biodiversity. Governance challenges of each of these environmental problems are studied at a particular scale or level at which the problem is conceptualized and solutions implemented (i.e., global, regional, national, and local). Then these levels and issues are brought together in a separate lecture where we examine the complex dynamics of multi-level, multi-sector governance for sustainability. The concluding lecture discusses some of the key challenges of and opportunities for transformative governance of a ‘new’ Earth in the Anthropocene.

The ten lectures are supported by seven interactive tutorials in five smaller groups. The tutorials are designed to aid understanding of the politics of the Earth with various interactive activities, games, and analyses, as well as practical exercises for the purpose of assessment.

The course is designed not only to introduce Earth’s politics as a subject of scholarly enquiry, but also to equip you with necessary skills and knowledge to be a change agent for a sustainable future. In the end, you will have a better understanding of how the system of Earth system governance works at and across different levels of social organization, and how its effectiveness could be improved for humanity to navigate through complex, interrelated environmental problems in the decades to come.

This course is the entry requirement for:

• Sustainable Land Use (GEO3-2121)
• Bachelors thesis GSS (GEO3-2422), track GST.