Energy and the Environment - Bridging the Divide in Global Climate Policy: Strategies for Enhanced Participation and Integration

Central challenges in the pursuit of sustainable development can only be met by an adequate understanding of the connections between environmental protection and energy supply. The key to a secure energy future and the solution of global environmental threats, such as the greenhouse effect, lies at the core of these challenges. Effective answers can only be elaborated through international cooperation between different academic disciplines, and joint efforts in theory and practice. Accordingly, the Summer Academy "Energy and the Environment" has adopted an international, interdisciplinary, and integrative approach to the relationship of energy, sustainable development, and climate change. It aims to provide highly qualified young researchers and practitioners from different disciplines and geographic backgrounds with an opportunity to establish contact and exchange knowledge, experience, and ideas, facilitating the establishment of new networks, and supporting the necessary integration and transfer tasks.

Each year, the Summer Academy has a specific thematic focus. For 2007, this focus will rest on the role of two major factions in the global climate regime: those who are perceived as having left the club, and those who, in some respects, have not yet been included as full members. Along this line, the Summer Academy will address the current situation in the United States, whose refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol stands in stark contrast to its massive contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, but whose dismissal as a climate laggard would fail to acknowledge the many dynamic initiatives at state and corporate level, and might too hastily write off the alternative approaches promoted by the federal administration; and also the role of the developing world, where rapidly growing emission levels urgently call for an inclusion of economies in transition into the global regime to contain anthropogenic climate change."

Faculty

The teaching faculty of the Summer Academy 2007 will consist of internationally recognized scholars, representatives from public authorities, and members of the consulting and corporate sectors. In addition to the existing network of experts grown in the course of the previous three Summer Academies, we will draw on our contact with experts on climate policy in North America established at guest lectures, academic workshops, and international conferences, including the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal in December 2005. Former participants in the Summer Academy now residing in the United States and working in the field of energy and the environment in the United States have also announced their willingness to support organizational matters.

Financial Information

• The full fee ( 1.500 € ) is to be paid by corporate participants.
• All other participants pay a reduced fee ( 300 € )

The fees cover all costs related to tuition and accommodation (with breakfast). Travel costs are not included. We will award several full and partial scholarships depending on personal merit and need. Further information on the application process is available by following the link "Application" section of the SUN website.