Objective
According to the principle of sustainable development, environmental policy should be consistent with the demands of inter-spatial, and inter-temporal, equity. That is, policies for sustainable development should not undermine the needs, or well-being, of members of distant states or future generations. Policies which seek to manage the threats posed by Global Environmental Change (GEC) are critical in this regard. Research conducted by a range of natural, and social, scientists (e.g. those working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has shown that GEC has profound implications for the way in which benefits and burdens are distributed across space and time. However, much less research has looked in detail at the exact nature of the threat that GEC poses to distributional equity, or at the likely distributive and social impacts of suggested policy responses to it. The proposed project would seek to address this knowledge gap by investigating several key global environmental issues (and the policies associated with their management) in terms of their implication for spatial and temporal equity.
The project has two key research objectives:
(1) to improve the conceptual resources available to researchers and policy-makers concerned with the relationships amongst environmental change, sustainable development, and social equity; and
(2) to improve the social scientific basis for the incorporation of the principle of sustainable development into EU policy-making.
Training provided:
-advanced training in social science research methods in environmental area
- monthly meetings with research supervisor
- library resource training (including databases and electronic journals)
- intensive instruction in written and spoken
Swedish Benefits for Applicant/Host
-applicant will improve understanding of principles, and constraints, underlying EU environmental policy-making
-experience of working within a supportive, intellectually challenging.