Environmental Decision-Making

Abstract

Environmental decision-making is at the core of sustainability policies and management of human-environment systems. This lecture provides an introduction to the conceptual background for environmental decision-making and teaches the practicalities of environmental decision-making by means of exemplary real world cases.

Objective

After the course, the students are able to - identify, describe and analyse the relevant aspects (drivers, actors, etc.) in concrete situations of environmental decision-making; - evaluate policy instruments and other institutional solutions for improved environmental decision-making; - modify and apply the approaches to deal with environmental decision-making as discussed in the case-studies to other cases.

Content

The lecture starts with the introduction of basic topics related to environmental decision-making. It then switches to a flipped-classroom format with individual project work. In this project work, the students work with existing governmental, academic, NGO, etc. reports on specific situations that involve environmental decision-making. This part of the lecture closes with a synthesis of the project work in the plenary. The second half of the semester focuses on a short individual project on a case of environmental decision-making chosen by each student, again organised in flipped-classroom format. The lecture closes with plenary lessons where the group work and individual project work is located in a broader context of central aspects of environmental decision-making and where a synthesis is drawn on the topics addressed in this lecture.

Resources