The seminar focuses on the relationships between ecosystems, biodiversity and society, both in terms of how ecosystems and biodiversity contribute to society’s and people’s survival, wellbeing, and flourishing, and in terms of how people (individuals, communities, and institutions) understand, value, and relate to ecosystems and biodiversity.
In the seminar will analyze and discuss together the multiple and diverse values of ecosystems and biodiversity across different traditions and knowledge systems, including decolonial perspectives, and engage with the role of values as leverage points for actions towards biodiversity conservation and sustainability. We will also critically analyze assumptions and implications of different valuation methods, policy recommendations, conservation approaches and environmental conflicts around biodiversity.
Core of the seminar discussion will be the IPBES Assessment Report on the diverse values and valuation of nature (https://www.ipbes.net/the-values-assessment) published in 2022.
Other readings include, besides environmental ethics, also interdisciplinary research from environmental and ecological economics, environmental sociology, psychology, and philosophy, policy documents and global assessment reports (such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and assessments by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Interface Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This is an interactive, research, and policy-oriented course. Students will have the opportunity of experimenting with methods of collaborative research oriented to a policy makers audience along the model of IPBES assessment reports.
- Dozent/in: Barbara Muraca