Environmental Studies

This course is concerned with how people, governments, organizations, and businesses understand environmental problems, negotiate interests, create policies, and implement solutions. It blends environmental studies, political science, political theory, law, social psychology, and economics. Its central aim is to analyze the structures and mechanics of power, knowledge, solidarity, cooperation, disagreement, and conflict as they are operate in different societies and at different scales of social organization. 

Its focus is on Italian environmental politics, which provides a complex case study given the many urgent issues Italy has to confront (including accelerating climate change, energy dependence, new challenges to food and urban systems, pollution, and rapid ecosystemic transformation and landscape degradation), its peculiarities (including its morphology, its centrality in the Mediterranean region, the constant entanglements between natural and cultural heritage on its territory, and the long shadow of criminal activities profiting at the expense of localities), its pugnacious, multilayered politics and highly bureaucratized policy-making, high levels of internal socio-economic and cultural diversity, and its evolving international relations.   

The course asks questions like: who and what causes environmental problems, and how? Who is affected? Who decides what should be done, in whose name, and with what authority? What power do different actors have? What values guide environmental policy? How do national and local environmental policy-makers interact with regional and international institutions?

Based on the study of selected marine ecosystems, this course analyzes the environmental forcing variables and constraints that shape them, in order to explain the different factors structuring biological communities and to situate biology within the broader field of oceanography. A field course at a marine station illustrates several of these concepts, such as adaptations to aquatic life and the relationship between spatial heterogeneity and biodiversity. The field component includes embarkation aboard Planula 4, an INSU–CNRS research vessel (FOF).

This course introduces the issues surrounding water in terms of management, sustainable development, and resource protection. Lectures, tutorials, and practical work are taught in various fields: hydrology, hydrogeology, mass transfer, and drilling. The water cycle is analyzed in detail through its different processes and associated mechanisms, with the goal of establishing hydrological and material budgets for the study of watersheds. A case‑study project is carried out during the semester, allowing students to put theory into practice and to develop an initial methodological and scientific approach in preparation for a future professional or research career. In hydrogeology, the basic principles are taught regarding flows, aquifers, and associated groundwater bodies.

This course introduces the quantitative treatment of marine and oceanographic data, with a focus on selecting, implementing, and interpreting numerical analyses suited to common oceanographic sampling strategies and experimental designs. It also covers the essential principles and techniques of signal processing as applied to marine environmental datasets, enabling them to analyze, filter, and interpret complex oceanographic signals.

The course introduces various types of chemical contaminants and their adverse effects on animals, humans and ecosystems, and environmental management strategies. It provides an overview of ecotoxicology principles, sources, chemical nature, fate of contaminants, and their interaction and impacts with the ecosystem, and the living organisms in the environment. It also relates ecotoxicology to risk assessment including assessment, monitoring, management and protection of the environment from toxicants. Students gain insights into the impacts of pollutants on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They delve into sustainable environmental management strategies, including pollution prevention, remediation, and ecological risk assessments.

This course explores the drivers of global change, both natural (e.g. Milankovitch cycles, tectonic drift) and anthropogenic (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, land-use change) and then examines how these drivers influence (and are influenced by) terrestrial and marine biological systems. A variety of topics, ranging from organismal and physiological responses to global change, biodiversity, global biogeochemical cycles, ecological function and ecosystem services are covered. While the majority of the class is focused on contemporary global change, this is contextualized relative to palaeohistorical environmental change. The course provides an integrated knowledge of contemporary environmental issues related to global change (e.g. carbon sequestration, climate change mitigation, land-use change) and its implications for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human wellbeing).  DP requirements: Completion of at least 70% of deliverables (tests, practicals, project report), including at least one class test and the project report; attendance of practicals; minimum of 40% for the class record. Assessment: A 3-hour examination written in June, with a sub-minimum of 40%, will count for 50% of the course. Coursework marks will be allocated as follows: Practical classes (assessed weekly) count 15%; research project counts 20%; class tests count 15%. Course entry requirements: BIO1000F/H, BIO1004F/S; approved 2000-level semester Science course. 

Focusing on "finance" as an essential element for societal systems transformation to achieve a sustainable society, this class explains the current role of finance in the sustainable development and environmental fields and their theoretical background. It focuses on the two types of environmental finance: 1) Finance related to international cooperation in which developed countries and others financially support developing countries to promote environmental measures in developing countries, and 2) The growing trend toward greening the financial system and the economy from the perspective of stabilizing the financial system. Beyond international environmental conventions, there is now an increasing number of initiatives by financial institutions and companies to address sustainability. 

This class introduces the expansion of environmental finance and its challenges today; introducing trends related to the United Nations; current discussions on sustainable finance and responses to climate and nature-related risks by financial institutions and companies, and the relationship with international environmental conventions. This class also discusses the expansion of environmental finance and its related governance.

This course introduces students to the principles of environmental pollution. Students explore the major types of pollution in air, water, and on land. Students think about the impacts and issues posed by environmental pollution. Finally students reflect on the strategies used to prevent and control environmental pollution.

This course provides a foundational understanding of dynamic oceanography, including both global and regional ocean circulation, ocean–atmosphere interactions, as well as the basic equations used to describe fluid motion. A field-based component, involving embarkation on research vessels, familiarizes students with real working conditions in the marine environment and introduces them to observational techniques and data collection at sea.

At the age of global ecological crisis, this course looks at the environment in its historical dimension in order to understand not how we got here, but rather, where exactly we stand. By examining this history over a long 20th century and in various geographical areas, from North America to Asia, this course examines the environment for what it has become today: the most political issue in the contemporary world.