In the beginning a general introduction into the idea and structure of the lecture series will be given. The students of the course get to know each other and the different experts from the partner universities.

Environmental governance is a term that refers to the way in which communities – e.g. different countries – organise planning, steering, and decision-making about a particular environmental issue. Governance concerns, among other things, decisions about the problems that need to be addressed, the actors that need to be involved and their role in the process, the knowledge that is mobilised, and the instruments that are used for planning, steering and coordination. This lecture will give a general introduction to environmental governance and elaborate on some key concepts for analysing and comparing governance practices in different European countries.

This lecture will provide a basic introduction to the concept of environmental justice, its origins and subsequent evolution and international proliferation. Main focus of the lecture is to shed light on the distributive and procedural aspects of environmental justice, and to examine interlinkages between these two concepts.

Spatial planning aims at balancing the use and protection of areas in support of a sustainable development, both in an environmental, societal as well as economic perspective. Holistic spatial planning systems are needed regarding land areas, at sea as well as in the interconnecting areas of land and sea, the coasts. This lecture will introduce spatial planning its processes in general.

European Seas belong to the busiest ones for transport and maritime industries, being at the same time an important environmental asset. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) has become increasingly important in recent years, as it offers an operational framework to maintain the value of marine biodiversity, while simultaneously allowing sustainable use of the economic potential. This lecture will introduce MSP and its processes to balance conflicting interests of maritime stakeholders and the marine environment towards healthy, resilient and productive oceans.

Ocean pollution, in particular debris in the marine and coastal environment - marine litter -, is a global challenge with remarkable environmental, social, and economic impacts. The problem is mainly attributed to society through its activities and behaviors. With this lecture, the marine litter topic is introduced together with its impacts and how individual and collective practices and waste management actions can be adopted to curb the problem.

Ongoing research on the climate system (e.g. paleoclimatology, radiative/heat transfer, circulation patterns) made global climate change as well as the influence of human emissions of greenhouse gases evident. The lecture will give an overview of the models and observations used to understand present and re-construct past climate, identify and quantify drivers for the global energy (im)balance and their effects on temperature, atmospheric circulations and water systems. Based on future emission scenarios, projections on the future climate as well as impact and risk assessment can be performed on global, regional and local scale.

Getting people to act on any issue has an essential prerequisite: to inform them about the issue and make them perceive it as a “problem” requiring some kind of action or solution. The main venue where interested or affected parties are presenting their (conflicting) views on CC mitigation/adaptation are the mass media. Quite different strategies and approaches should be developed, depending on the interests and purpose of the emitter of the message and the target group and the approach chosen. In this lecture we will discuss how environmental claims are presented (and covered) in printed media with a special emphasis on how best (and most effectively) communicate CC action.

Management of coastal regions is a complex task. When such a vulnerable social-ecological system is disturbed by a flood event, returning to the state prior to disaster is often undesirable. Unimproved re-establishing would put the area at the same risk. Instead, the imperative is to learn individual´s and society´s lessons from experience and to transform to a less vulnerable and more resilient state. The topic of this lecture is, how transformation towards flood resilient coastal areas can be promoted.

Climate change has a lot of awareness all over the world, and not least in the coastal areas, where sea level rise and flooding become more and more challenging, climate change adaptation plays an important role.

Traditionally, climate change adaptation has taken place by means of engineering solutions as dikes against sea level rise and river flooding, though the focus on nature-based solutions, which also contributes to the mitigation efforts, is now becoming further developed.

This lecture will introduce the various types of solutions and how they fit to different conditions and prioritisations.

In this lecture, you will learn about the ways in which climate adaptation in the Netherlands, Germany and England is constrained in the area of coastal risk management. In this context, the concept of lock-in will be introduced and applied. Lock-in refers to a situation in which the status quo is actively kept in place, which hampers change. This lock-in is brought about by a combination of factors relating to behaviour, institutions, and infrastructure & technology, which reinforce a certain way of working through time.

UNESCO Global Geoparks are single, unified geographical areas where geological, biological and cultural heritages are managed with a holistic concept of protection, education and sustainable development. In their bottom-up approach two of the key subjects are climate changes issue and water management while involving local communities. The topic will focus on strategies, activities and examples from Romania and Global Geoparks.

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