International Environmental Politics, Fall 2014, Professor Wil Burns
Exam Logistics:
1. Please answer two out of the three questions below, allotting a maximum of three typed (double-spaced, 12 point type) pages for each answer. Please only prepare one document for submission, i.e. don’t produce a separate document for each answer;
2. You are permitted to draw upon any source to answer the examination questions, i.e. lecture materials, readings, outside materials;
3. Each of these questions ask you to prepare a memorandum. I have attached a page providing you with a standard format for such documents.
4. When citing your sources, please use endnotes (in any citation style you wish). Your endnotes will not be part of your page count;
5. Please submit your examination via the Dropbox folder for your respective sections AND bring a stapled hard copy to submit to your respective Graduate Student Instructors in the lecture session on November 10;
a. Please include your name and section number on the examination;
6. If you have any questions about the examination, give me a call at: 650.281.9126 or via email: [email protected]; I will try to get back to you very quickly!
Examination Questions:
1. The year is 2025, and the world community, facing projected temperature increases of 4-4.5°C before the end of the century, has agreed to launch a research program that might ultimately lead to deployment of stratospheric injections of sulfuric acid in an attempt to stabilize global temperatures. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been tasked with governing this deployment. Based primarily on your breathtaking performance in ESPM 169, you have been hired as a staff member on the UNFCCC’s new Subsidiary Body for Climate Geoengineering (SBCE). Your supervisor, Dr. Alice Albedo, has asked you to draft a memorandum on how the precautionary principle should be implemented in this new program. Get to it, or you may, instead, be asked to pilot the first sulfur injection weather balloon.
2. Based upon your breathtaking performance in ESPM 169, you have been hired as a staff member to the High-level Political Forum, the successor organization to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. Your supervisor, Dr. Angela TwentyOne, has asked you to draft a memorandum outlining the top priorities that the global community should be pursuing to achieve sustainable development over the next few decades. Get to it, or you may be re-assigned to the Forum’s satellite office in Akron.
3. Based on your breathtaking performance in ESPM 169, you have been hired as staff member at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Secretariat. Your new boss, Dr. Frederico Fauna, has asked you to draft a memorandum on how to improve the treaty’s effectiveness. He’s also interested in your ideas about what the top priorities of the Parties should be in the next several decades. Get to it, or your job may be more threatened than a Tonkin snub-nosed monkey.