Sustainability has become one of the critical issues in political debates at all levels of government. From catastrophic discourse to explicit rejection, this political principle is appropriated by political forces from right-wing to left-wing and questions the functioning of our Western society. Also, the introduction of the concept of sustainability provoked a shift in the development and steering of environmental policies, pushing towards the integration of environmental protection in other sectoral policies. Reaching sustainability is not only a matter of scientific knowledge, but a matter of governance and democracy as well.
The aim of this course is to help students understanding the sustainability debate, and make them able to prepare public policy responses to the claims in favour of more sustainability in society. This course presents the problems raised by human pressure on nature and the environment as well as the remedies designed by the public authorities in Europe in order to tackle these problems. It introduces definitions of sustainability at the light of past and current environmental policies and principles (e.g. precautionary principle, emission quotas or integrated management) and proposes an analytical framework for questioning (and reforming) public policies towards more sustainability with an equal emphasis on procedural mechanisms and substantial rules. This analytical framework is then applied to various sectors (e.g. natural resources management, energy, transports, development, etc.) and different levels of authority in a comparative perspective (e.g. European Union, The Netherlands, or the Belgian Regions).
As part of the course, the students will prepare a reform proposal of a public policy of their choice, including a procedural strategy to introduce the policy changes, with the aim to “green” the public policy. They will use their knowledge and skills in policy analysis, gain a new knowledge about environmental politics, and search for empirical data and evidence. The oral presentation will feed a debate in class that will discuss theories, facts and values. The thematic sessions will also be conducted by the students themselves on the basis of selected readings.
At the end of the course, students will have the capacity to:
- Identify the issues at stake in the debates about sustainability;
- Evolve through the multi-level governance arrangements of environmental policies;
- Deconstruct and propose strategies for “greening” any public policy;
- Debate and defend policy reforms orally on the basis of explicit normative grounds.
- Teacher: Aubin David
- Teacher: Carlier Nadège