Globalization, Human Development and Sustainability: Politics and Policies in the framework of the 2030 Agenda

Increasing inequalities, climate change, the transition towards new and more sustainable models of production and consumption, urbanization and migrations represent some of the most urgent challenges of our globalized world. How globalization reshapes wealth and opportunities around the world? Is globalization a force for good, enabling poor nations to lift themselves up from poverty or does it create vast opportunities only for a small minority.

Starting from the approval of the 2030 Agenda by the UN system, states and government dispose now, for the first time in our era, of a universally agreed agenda that established 17 goals and 176 targets. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide governments with a set of guidelines, values and principles that will define policy reforms and public interventions for the next decades. Some lessons from our recent past alert however about the risk of low implementation or failure for such ‘big plans’. Indeed, in the last five decades the international community has already been spending more than 2,3 trillion of dollars but the path towards sustainable human development seems to be still full of obstacles and constraints.

The course combines analytical tools and categories stemming from political science, international relations, economic geography, urban studies, European Integration studies, public policies and development economics. The objective of this course is to introduce the student to the most salient aspects of the debate around development and international cooperation. The first part will be dedicated to shed light and define fundamentals concepts and categories of these debates such as globalization, development, poverty, inequalities. Classical views on development will be contrasted with more contemporary approaches such as: no-one living behind, whole-of-society-approach, territorial local economic development, multilevel governance and multi-stakeholder participation.

A special emphasis will be devoted to the role of national governments, international agencies and cities in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and their role in answering to the demands coming from citizens and social groups. The main objective of the course will be on outlining the institutional and political mechanisms of international development, as well as examine their impact in developing territories and beneficiaries. The EU – as the main donor of official development assistance – conducts, for example, several
development programmes and projects that not only seek to provide funds but also to involve local and no-public stakeholders. Relying upon these different sources, the course will provide an important set of examples and real cases about what work (and does not work) in
development cooperation such as most innovative and more participative practices in international cooperation.