Please find below the login information to our introductory session. Access to the Learnweb folder will be provided during our first meeting.
Join zoom-meeting:
https://wwu.zoom.us/j/69584307924?pwd=TDYzZTV0Vlg0dC9PQmJwcXFLUmJoQT09
Meeting-ID: 695 8430 7924
Password: GEG2021
Rising global temperatures, sea-level rise, the acidification of the oceans, desertification, but also the stress on environmental sinks through global waste production, biodiversity loss and species extinction – the list goes on and on – threaten human livelihoods everywhere (albeit to various, highly unequal distributed degrees) and prompt mankind to react to these environmental challenges in rapid and decisive ways. In December 2015, official representatives of nearly 200 countries gathered in Paris to negotiate a global agreement on climate change mitigation and adaptation in order to address one of the (if not THE) most serious problems facing the international community. Only two months earlier, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 goals (SDGs) to establish climate action not just as recurring rhetoric in the context of global summits, but as concrete measures on national, regional and local levels of government. Within the field of Global Environmental Governance, scholars analyze these political dynamics and critically evaluate if the chosen goals, targets and strategies are, for example, most effective in reducing climate change, democratically legitimate, compromised by economic interests, or simply failing at what they set out to achieve.
Simply put, ”Global Environmental Governance” (GEG) describes all efforts of the international community to manage and solve shared environmental problems. Governance describes the management and steering of actions and processes in the field of public affairs that are based on rules, norms or regulatory mechanisms and which can be organized as hierarchical, marketed or networked forms of interaction. Although this definition appears to be quite technical, it is important to highlight the fact that specific governance models are always based on the interests and values of various actors that are either part of them or that were involved in their design. The participation of specific actors, state and nonstate, public and private, within structures and processes of GEG is therefore of particular relevance.
The course introduces theoretical and conceptual approaches for the study of global environmental governance (e.g. power, legitimacy, authority, accountability, responsibility) and takes a more in-depth perspective on different issue areas within the field (e.g. food governance, energy governance, waste governance, biodiversity governance). Students will be able to gain a broad knowledge of conceptual debates and empirical case studies, while also having the opportunity to become an expert in a particular subdomain of GEG.
Course structure
The course concept is structured along alternating phases of synchronous and asynchronous teaching. In self-learning phases (part 1), students will prepare the course material and work on specific tasks outlined on the Learnweb platform. Through synchronous peer-to-peer exchange (phase 2), students will work together in small groups on specific questions, based on the results and experiences from the self-study phase. Subsequently, we will discuss the central results together in a plenary session (phase 3). In this phase, you can also expect further inputs in the form of short lectures and guided tasks. While you can freely organize phase 1 and phase 2 amongst yourselves within a given period of time, it is particularly important that you attend the synchronous plenary sessions and make sure that there will not be any overlap with other obligations, since these dates are central to the successful completion of the course. We meet synchronously via the ZOOM platform on the following dates:
- Introductory session: April 9, 2021, 2.15 pm to 3.45 pm
- Plenary Session 1: May 21, 2021, 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm
- Plenary Session 2: July 2nd, 2021, 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm
- Lehrende/r: Tobias Gumbert