Grand Challenges for Sustainability- Period 1

Sustainable development is the central challenge of our days. Currently, the Earth is inhabited by 7.6 billion people (9 times more than at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century) who together produce more than 90 billion US dollars of output (200 times more than at the start of the Industrial Revolution). Both population and output are projected to keep on growing during the next decades. Furthermore, our world is increasingly interconnected through trade, migration, technology diffusion, knowledge flows, and social networks. As a result, human influence on the Earth's physical processes has been increasing. Nowadays, in the Anthropocene, human activity is even deemed to be the dominant influence on the Earth's climate and natural environment. Although two decades of economic development have brought widespread prosperity, more than a billion people are still living in extremepoverty. Moreover, by crossing planetary boundaries human activities may plunge the world into a gigantic environmental crisis caused by climate change and biodiversity loss. In order to eradicate poverty and to prevent environmental catastrophes, a transition needs to me made from the business as usual (BAU) to a sustainable development (SD) path. Making this transition requires good governance, not only by governments, but also by citizens and businesses. The objective of this course is to characterize a path of sustainable development and to identify the Grand Challenges that the world faces in making the transition from BAU to the SD path.

The course is organized around the Sustainable Development Goals as adopted by the UN in 2015. The first week will start with a general introduction that sketches several important sustainability issues, illustrated by empirical evidence. During the course, we pay attention to the scientific as well as to the economic and societal dimensions of the identified challenges for sustainability. Furthermore, both the positive or analytical side (i.e., how to make sense of the interactions of the economy, society and the environment?) and the normative or ethical side (i.e., what should be the objectives of a well-functioning society?) of sustainable development will be discussed during the course. The topics that will be dealt with during the course are:
1. Growth and development: capital accumulation and technological change;
2. Ending global poverty, education, and health;
3. Management of natural resources and planetary boundaries;
4. Climate change: climate science and environmental policies;
5. Biodiversity and land-use change;
6. Global governance.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.