[MUSIC] Welcome to our course on Environmental Management and Ethics. My name is Steffen Hansen and I'm an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark at the Department of Environmental Engineering. I will be your instructor on this course alongside with Lauge Clausen who you'll meet later in the course. There's no doubt that the number of environmental challenges that we face today globally are quite overwhelming. They could be compared to a multi-headed monster. We have issues such as climate change, global deforestation, increasing population growth. Lack of access to clean water, industrial uses of toxic chemicals and all the initiatives and attempts to create green growth. All of these challenges seem to be coming together at this point in time, making issues and the course environmental management and ethics more relevant than it has ever been before. There's little doubt that we now live in what could be called or termed an anthropocentric world. Nature is more and more dominated by humans. The integration of human and natural systems is more profound that it has ever been throughout history. Our capacity as humans to manipulate with the external environment has become ever increasing and is providing a huge impact on the global environment not just locally, but also globally. The physical state of the natural systems that we influence as humans has gone from local to global and there's profound uncertainties, and complexities associated with understanding how human, and environment interacts. So how, can this course hopefully help you address some of the challenges that we face? We hope to introduce you to different environmental management approaches. We hope to introduce you to different decision-support frameworks and tools that are used in different environmental managemental approaches. And all along, we hope to show you how environmental ethics and environmental management can be combined to hopefully address many of the challenges that we face today. It's important and that's what we hope to underline in this course, to understand how environmental and social interactions come together when it comes to trying to solve the environmental challenges that we have. We also hope for you to understand the importance of having different stakeholders involved in the various decision making processes. And that you understand that different perceptions of a given problem might not necessarily be due to misunderstandings of the nature of the problem, but might simply be due to different environmental ethical perspectives on how we should perceive on society. We also hope that you will be able to evaluate uncertainties in regards to a complex risk and that all in all will help you realize that there may be different opinions on how to solve a given environmental problem, and they might all have some merit to them. They might all have a degree of being actually the right solution to the problem. So, how should we define environmental management? Environmental management has been defined as human's interaction with an impact on the environment. When we talk about human interaction, it can be politics. It can be projects build projects, planning projects, etc. And it can also be how humans use natural resources. It involves the relationship of the human environment, such as social, cultural, economic environment with the biophysical environment. There's a number of environmental management systems that have also been developed in the recent decades, but that's not the subject of this course. This course relates to human's interaction with the environment and how humans use or live with the environment, or should live and use environmental resources. Environmental ethics on the other hand is considers ethical relationships between humans and the environment. So in that sense, environmental ethics cross on a number of different disciplines, such as law, sociology, theology, economic, ecology, etc. Environmental ethics is part of environmental philosophy, but it's a very young scientific discipline. The overall learning objectives or overall learning goals of this course is that you will eventually be able to understand the fundamental theories about environmental management and ethics. In that sense, that you understand. That you're knowledgeable and that you have comprehensive understanding of environmental management and ethical aspects. That you're able to look at a given environmental issue from different angles. That you're able to apply different tools that we present to you in the course. That you're able to analyze different circumstances and that you're able to reflect upon these circumstances. And finally, the third object is that you're able to organize a process where environmental and ethical aspects or considerations are brought into play in a concrete example of your choice. So, here is a short overview of the different lectures that we will be providing in the course. We've divided the course into three overall parts. So the first part, we'll devote to introducing you to environmental ethics. The second part relates to different decision-support tools and that are used currently to manage the environment. And then finally, we'll look into environmental management and policy. When it comes to the evaluation of your performance in the course, 50% of the course evaluation or the evaluation will consist of various quizzes that are related to the lectures that we provide in the course and the purpose with the quizzes is to test your knowledge and what you have learned throughout the course. Each multiple choice quiz will consist of three to ten multiple choice questions. We also have two peer review assignments associated with the course and they will in total merit for 50% of the evaluation. The purpose of the peer review assignments are for you to apply the knowledge that you gained and also show your peers that you're able to analyze, synthesize and evaluate complex environmental ethical issues. And again, of your choice. So before we get started with the environmental ethical aspects or providing with you an introduction to environmental ethics, I would very much like you to go through the following exercise. It's also the discussion prompt associated with this lecture. The exercise or the challenge that we provide to you is for you to identify the top five environmental challenges that you think are the most important at this given time. Once you thought about this, what you think are the five most critical environmental ethical dilemmas or challenges that we face today. We would like you to discuss your list with four other people. Note down whether these four other people might have identified other issues compared to the ones that you have on your list. Why do they agree with the five that you have on your list? Or why don't they agree with the five that you have on your list? Explore why they might and not agree? And then finally, try to sit down with these four people and actually agree and rank these top five issues which of the five is do you considered collectively to be the most important one and the second most important and etc. And then finally, we would like you to post your observations and reflections in the discussion forum associated with this lecture and this course. There's a few rules of engagement and interactions that we want you to apply when you engage with the four other people of your choice. First of all, you have to listen twice as much as you talk. Pay attention to their views and do not interrupt them. Show them that you're listening and keep an open mind to what they're proposing. Defer making judgements. And finally, ask explorative questions. So, that you can get the utmost understanding of what their views are and what their perception of the top five environmental challenges of today are. We would also like you to choose an environmental ethical dilemma that you can use to work with in this course. Start exploring which environmental ethical dilemma you might be interested in working with and try to explore which environmental ethical aspects might come into play during in a given dilemma of your choice. In this case, it's important to remember how a dilemma is defined. A dilemma is defined as some kind of friction that arises due to the interaction between humans and the natural system. So if you have a good case or a dilemma that you'd like to work with, try to really pin down what are the elements or friction in this case. Where do you see some interaction between humans and the environment that might be causing friction? The example or the case that you choose can be local. It can be regional or it could also be a global dilemma. That's up to you. It could be one of the five in my mental challenges that you have just identified in the exercise. But again, that's up to you. Eventually, you'll have to apply some of the methods and tools that we teach you in this course to your specific environmental ethical dilemma and you will also have to provide a set of well-founded policy recommendations on how your environmental ethical dilemma can be resolved. With that, I would like to thank you very much for your attention. [MUSIC]
