Global Environmental Issues

Environmental problems are framed here as a political puzzle rather than a scientific one: why does a shared planet keep getting degraded, and why do collective responses keep falling short? You'll work through competing diagnoses (commons dynamics, population pressure, capitalism) and the main governance responses (multilateral diplomacy, transnational regimes, market finance, individual responsibility) using cases like water scarcity, climate change, and deforestation, with assessment built around a midterm and a research paper. It's a useful early IR elective for grounding later work on global governance, security, and political economy in a concrete issue area.