70049 - Global Environmental Challenges

Academic Year 2020/2021

  • Docente: Marco Casari
  • Credits: 8
  • SSD: SECS-P/02
  • Language: English

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is an understanding of the major sustainability issues the world is currently facing: overharvesting of renewable resources, biodiversity loss, and, above all, global climate change. By the end of the course, students are expected to comprehend these issues with respect to their scientific basis, economic incentives, and management policies.

Course contents

The course is organized with a part of lectures taught online on MS TEAMS (20 hours) and another taught in presence (20 hours). The number of students allowed in class is determined on the basis of class capacity and by the health and safety provisions that deal with the pandemic emergency. In case more students want to attend classes in presence than permitted by the rules, a system of shifts will be organized so to allow students to participate. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.


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The course objective is to provide the tools for the understanding of the economics of climate change at the national and global level. It studies the interconnections of ecological issues with economic and political processes.

Lectures will be organized around the following topics:

• The Anthropocene

• The science of climate change

• Social and economic impacts of climate change

• Mitigation as a social dilemma

• Economic models of climate change

• Mitigation as risk management

• Inequality in climate responsibilities and impacts

• Mitigation between the present and the future

• Ecological transition using carbon prices

• Ecological transition as a system transition

• The political economy of climate policies

• Adaptation

• Geoengineering

Readings/Bibliography

Lectures and readings will be in English. The textbook is William Nordhaus (2013) The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, Yale University Press

Other readings will be made available on Virtuale: some are required while others only recommended. The site will be updated continuously and it is recommended to check weekly.

Teaching methods

Lectures with slides presentation

Student presentations

Assessment methods

Your class grade will come from a group project and from the final written exam.

Final exam. The final exam is written and will comprise 5-10 questions. Answers are short essays that focus on defining concepts, illustrating theories, reporting empirical evidence, providing interpretations, solving numerical exercises. Rather than focusing on your memory ability, the final exam aims at assessing your level of understanding and your ability to work with the concepts. The focus will be on the material in the required readings and the slides. The final exam counts for two thirds of your overall grade. For those students who opt out of the group project, the final grade will be based entirely on a more difficult version of the final written exam.

Group project. It will be based on a topic or case study taken from a list drawn up by the instructor. Each group will prepare the slides and do an in-class presentation, see the dates below. In addition, you prepare a brief memo with the bibliography, and some technical notes. The project is intended as an active exercise that may require the direct collection of data and their processing. The formation of the groups and the choice of subject will be made by the instructor taking into account students' preferences. The group will include between two and five people, depending on the total number of students in the class. More detailed guidelines will be provided.

Overall Grade. One third of the grade comes from the group project and two thirds from the final written exam. If the student passes the final exam before June 2022, the coursework and grade from the group project will enter into the computation of the overall grade. This procedure will be followed even if the student re-takes the final exam multiple times.

Teaching tools

Slide presentations
Frontal lectures

 

Office hours

See the website of Marco Casari

SDGs

Climate Action Life on land

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.