Today we are joined by Professor Alessandro Banterle, full professor at the University of Milan (UNIMI) and director of what is currently a unicum among Italian universities: the Department of Environmental Science and Policy - ESP.
He is one of the driving forces in the SePA degree program, an innovative course focused on topical issues with the aim of training future Environmental Managers, which we are fortunate to have explained here in person by one of the program’s founders.
Tell us about how and why this department was created.
We were founded in April 2017, the 33rd department at UNIMI and the last to be added. What drove us to create it was an innovative idea based on certain initiatives promoted abroad, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, which is to create thematic departments.
The majority of departments are, in fact, disciplinary departments – which is to say, they deal with a specific discipline, such as the Department of Mathematics.
We wanted to create a department that would focus on the macro-theme of the environment. When building a department like this, since the environment and its problems can be addressed from many points of view, be they scientific, technological, regulatory, or economic, a mono-disciplinary approach can be reductive.
The environment needs to be investigated from every perspective in order to be truly understood, and it is here that the second crucial aspect of this department comes into play: multidisciplinarity.
Within our university there were many scholars who dealt with the environment, but they were all scattered in different departments. There were those who investigated it from the perspective of chemistry, others from an ecological point of view, and so on, each working on their own. We didn't even know each other. The guiding idea was to create a common container where we could bring together all these scholars to encourage the integration of their respective skills.
The great challenge was to put together the so-called Hard Sciences (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geology) with the Life Sciences (Ecology, Zoology, etc.) and the Economic-Social Sciences (Economics and Law). The result is a department with three souls. In this way we manage to have a very broad spectrum of action and capacity for research, interaction, and influence. Much more than in a disciplinary department.
Please explain the significance of the name.
It’s called “Environmental Science and Policy” precisely because on the one hand we want to make a contribution to science by focusing on environmental issues and the search for innovative solutions. On the other hand, we want to participate in a decisive way in the definition of the methods of intervention, in answering the question "What can be done about X…" with regard to the various environmental issues.
So that “and” is very important.
(smiles) Absolutely. Many people say Environmental Policy Science, but Environmental Science AND Policy is something completely different.
We are fascinated by this approach because the aim of this magazine is to ensure that eco-sustainability is no longer perceived as something limited to the technical-scientific field, but as something that can be approached from all points of view, thus becoming part of everyday culture.
Your project is excellent, especially in its foundational idea. I'll give you an example: one of the latest initiatives we have in the pipeline is a master's degree, taught in English, on Climate Change, an important issue that involves sustainability and the environment, and emphasized by the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) of the United Nations. You hear climate change and you think of governments, international agreements, reduction of emissions, politics. The reality is that individual behavior has turned out to be equally if not more important. By individual behavior I mean the behavior of both companies and consumers. Involving consumers as active players in addressing climate emergencies is crucial.
What is the profile of the faculty of this department and how is it organized?
Let me start with the Hard Sciences and I'll mention some numbers as well: we have 5 mathematicians (after the Math department, we have the most mathematicians. We need several people to work on the models needed to analyze the environment and climate change). We have a small group of physicists-climatologists and a small group of glaciologists (who study glacier melting, a field in which we operate at a very high level).
Then there are the chemists, who study all the problems of ‘green chemistry’, materials, and much more. We have the ecologists, who deal with the interaction of animals and plants with the environment, understood as the entirety of terrestrial events and abiotic and biotic components. They are mainly specialized in ornithology.We have zoologists as well, including a great group that won a very important grant from the ERC (European Research Council).
Then there are agronomists, food technologists, veterinarians, and even some toxicologists. We also have a hydraulic engineer and an architect, who provide a more practical perspective. Finally we have the Social Sciences component: a lot of economists, of which I am one, who deal with environmental, agri-food, and business economics, and a very solid group of administrative lawyers.
It’s a very diversified and articulated group.
I would like to point out that our approach to teaching is exactly the opposite of "do a bit of everything but in the end remain generalist".
Because the approach to the environment is so complex that it can only be multifactorial.
Given the European and international policies of the coming decades, such as the Green Deal, it’s difficult to imagine degree programs more suited to the historical moment. Also because we know that climate change has an exponential progression, accelerating from year to year. The impact of the people coming out of dregree programs like this will undoubtedly be increasingly vital.
Absolutely. The degree programs we have created will have to meet the growing demand for new professionals in the field. When we open new degree courses, we always hold meetings with the social partners, which means companies, the world of business rather than the public sphere, to understand if we’re going in the right direction. And we’ve had very positive feedback.
To cite an example, in a recent meeting with ITALFERR they told us about their sustainability office and that they will be looking to fill roles like the ones we are training people for in the near future. All companies, large, medium, and small, are asking themselves this same question. All of this while remaining with their feet on the ground, because oftentimes when we talk about the environment, there’s a lot of empty platitudes, or what is called "green washing".
With the Goals of the United Nations, with the Green Deal of the European Union, sustainability will be the great theme of the years to come. The Green Deal says it very clearly: we want to decarbonize society. Consequently, there will be an increasing need for professionals who know how to face the challenge, in both the private and public sectors.
Last devil's advocate question. Beyond the dynamics of production and economics, there are dynamics that are based on an ecological ideology. What is the attitude that a university must have with respect to an ideological approach?
The attitude of the university is given by the sciences. We base ourselves on that. There are those of us who come from a scientific background, those who come from the world of economics or law. But above all we are university professors, and we therefore base our thinking on study, knowledge, and science. Certainly not on ideology.
This is what we believe. Ideologies do not help. An excessively ideological vision is necessarily closed, whereas a vision based on knowledge, on data, on learning is open. The goal is to try to understand reality as it is without preconceptions. It is fundamental: before saying something, verify it.
The ideological approach that you mention is likely to lead us to read the world not through the eyes of knowledge, but the eyes of those who, starting from preconceptions, want to arrive at ready-made results.
Our goal is to do good science and then be able to have an impact on society and the choices of businesses and governments.
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