Environmental and Energy Policy

The course aims introduces students to the international framework for environmental protection, including international institutions, policies and the principles and rules of international environmental law. The course introduces briefly the main global environmental problems, stressing their importance and the urgent need to resolve them. The course examines how the international community has recognised and sought to deal with the interdependence of the global environment through regional and international agreements. A brief history of the development of the key international environmental institutions will be also presented. The role of these international institutions, such as UNEP and CSD, will be examined, as well as the main multilateral, environment-related agreements, such as the Montreal and the Kyoto Protocols. The effectiveness of these institutions and agreements in protecting the global environment will be assessed and the possibility of setting up an international organization that would centralize all the issues related to international environmental protection, such as the proposed World Environment Organization (WEO) will be discussed. The course will also study the role of “stakeholders” in international environmental governance. The course will assess the increasingly prominent role of NGOs in international environmental institutions, participating in many activities, including negotiation, monitoring and implementation, roles which were traditionally reserved to states. Proposals on how this role could be further developed and better organized will also be presented.