Sustainability: scientific and social issues

Objective

The course aims to introduce the major contemporary environmental issues, then to introduce the conceptual contents of sustainability and, in fine, to discuss the various responses, and to know the main social scenarios in the scientific literature.

Content

Planetary overview:

• About economic activities from the 1950s onwards
• Income in terms of the planetary distribution of wealth
• Resource status and disturbance status of the biosphere system
• Genetic awareness of environmental problems
• The five characteristics of contemporary environmental problems: globality; invisibility; imprecision; visibility; inertia/irrationality; versibility; flows versus pollution
• Presentation of the major ecological scenarios: 1) Fundamentalist ecology; 2) Authoritarian ecology; 3) Sustainable development; 4) Prosperity without growth

The fundamentalist scenario:

• The intrinsic value
• Aldo Leopold
• Arne Naess
• Can we build a legal system that is no longer anthropocentric
• Can we construct a moral system that is no longer anthropocentric?
• Can we build a political system that is no longer anthropocentric
• Breaking the deadlock by moving on from biocentric galitarianism

The authoritarian scenario:

• Hans Jonas and the Principle of Responsibility;
• A situation inédite
• The Principle and its implications for the very concept of responsibility;
• The heuristics of fear
• The principle of responsibility and public policy
• Critique de l’autoritarisme en environnement

The sustainable development scenario:

• Historical introduction
• High vs. low sustainability
• Sustainable development, principles and strategies of sustainability: a) the 3 pillars; b) the principle of precaution; c) public debate; d) strategies for de-accessioning (clean production, co-design, co-branding, etc.); e) the principle of sustainable development, co-design, industrial ecology, circular economy and 3Rs strategy, functionality economy 1 and 2) and coupling
• Critical assessment: a) weakness of the concept; b) failure of coupling and reasons for failure; c) prospects

The prosperous scenario without growth

• Introduction to prosperity without growth
• Genetics of the critique of growth
• Pistes pour un modèle macro-économique sans croissance
• National governance and long-term management
• International governance and management of the long term
• Corporate governance
• Values and lifestyles

Objective

The aim of the tutorial course is to  delve deeper into areas covered by the general course: 

• Acquire a general culture of environmental issues and sustainability;
• Understand the social aspects and implications of environmental issues
• Deepen the theme of sustainability through targeted topics according to the speakers' specialisations.
• Develop the critical abilities of·es students with the aim of being able to pass judgement on the different scenarios developed in the scientific literature
• Developing students' abilities to grasp the environmental components and implications of a given problem or issue

Content

Running of the séances : the idea of the séminaire is to replicate the Citizens' Climate Convention that took place in France in 2019 on our scale and in the context of the séminaire : As a citizen of this new climate convention for Lausanne, you will choose a theme and form a group to work on it for the rest of the semester. 

As the year progresses, you will deepen your knowledge through presentations by researchers from UNIL and EPFL on their research related to sustainability, as well as players in the world of sustainability.

You will learn and put into practice brainstorming, non-violent communication and citizen democracy techniques with the aim of organising yourselves together.

At the end, you will be asked to propose a series of thematic measures on which you will be asked to vote in order to provide, as a class, a comprehensive document incorporating your best proposals for redesigning the sustainability policy of the city of Lausanne.

Each week we will therefore alternately have collective work sessions to co-construct measures to transform the city of Lausanne, or discussion sessions with sustainability experts and players.

Course: can be taken without the "course-seminar".
Course-seminar: it is necessary to have followed and validated; or to follow in parallel ‘Sustainability: scientific and social issues’ course

Course: continuous control
Course-seminar: a poster presented and a report on the work of reflection during the semester.

NB: The corresponding credits for this course cannot be validated for FGSE students

Sophie Swaton : Sophie.Swaton@unil.ch
Gabriel Salerno : gabriel.salerno@unil.ch
Florian Barras : florian.barras@unil.ch