Seminar in Environmental Governance

Increasingly, citizens, civil society institutions, and international governmental organizations are playing crucial roles in environmental and natural resource management. This shift of power away from states, both “upward” to the international level and “downward” to citizens, begs several questions: What roles should the various actors play in these multi-level governance systems in order to ensure the most favorable, and most just, environmental and social outcomes? To what extent can they work together to achieve mutual, or at least mutually-compatible, goals? Is it necessary, even productive, for groups to maintain their own identities and distinct agendas, nurturing not a stifling consensus but a perpetual – yet respectful – debate? This seminar course will engage with these questions.