Global Challenges – Sustainable Futures

Global Challenges — Sustainable Futures is a course offered through the FUBIS programme at Freie Universität Berlin that examines the politics, governance, and ethics of sustainability. The course starts from the observation that the major challenges facing society — poverty, climate change, environmental degradation, and resource scarcity — are global in nature, while the existing system of governance based on sovereign states is structured around national interests and competition rather than shared responsibility. Climate change receives the most sustained attention within this framework. The course covers the science behind global warming, the role and functioning of the IPCC and the UNFCCC, and the design and ambitions of the Paris Agreement, including an assessment of whether it can achieve its goal of limiting warming to well below 2°C/1.5°C. Broader economic and political global challenges are also examined alongside environmental ones. The course is offered at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin, Germany.