Our world is facing unprecedented change. The task of science helps us understand - to map, measure, model, predict and forecast - such change. Yet effective governance and policy are the tools to ensure scientific knowledge translates into societal and political action to mitigate the harmful impacts environmental change. However, the relationship between science, governance and policy is not straightforward. It is necessary to understand what governance and policy are and what can be achieved through (good) governance and the creation of policy. It is also vital to understand the logics and power dynamics that shape governance and policy, the politics of data that inform it, the difficulties of enacting governance and policy in a space that is (mostly) liquid, three-dimensional in form and has variable legal status, and where enforcement of governance is tricky in a space typically ‘out of sight and mind’.
This course provides a necessary bridge for students seeking to understand governance and policy, and well as providing a working knowledge of the history of ocean governance, typical approaches, and contemporary challenges. It urges students to think critically, an essential transferable skill. It dismantles the idea of governance and policy as natural ‘givens’ to saving and fixing the oceans, to better interrogate how this goal can actually be achieved. The course aims to enable students to have a good handle on key issues and to be armed with knowledge to assist in more careful planning of marine futures. It also engages practical skills in communication, group work, independent reading, problem solving and debate.
Expertise
The students:
- Become aware of the role of history as they relate to contemporary policy landscapes.
- Learn modes of critical thinking about the logics and power dynamics that shape governance and policy.
- Engage various examples and empirical case studies to understand the operation of ocean governance and policy.
- Have opportunities to investigate, examine, research, debate, discuss and deliberate current pressing environmental issues.
Methodological skills
The students:
• structure, document and evaluate problems and solutions using the tools of policy brief design
• devise, plan and articulate modes of engaging publics in governance decision making via writing a stakeholder engagement document
Social skills
The students:
- consider governance questions problems in group settings through producing presentations
- discuss and argue a point through organised group debate tasks
Self-skills
The students:
- read independently through the detailed literature lists accompanying each lecture
- manage their time through preparation for seminar sessions
- reflect on their actions when describing problems and developing solutions to ocean governance
