Second year at University of Padova: Module 1

Social Responsibility by public and private organisations

 

Course objectives: The aim is to give students a broad view and essential skills in relation to the core issue of ethics in forestry. The course is preliminary to the comprehension of the following ones and has a comprehensive and wide approach to the main concepts related to the subject.

 

Course content:

The issue of sustainable forest management and responsible use of forest resources has become a worldwide concern in recent years. The importance of applying ethics rules to the forestry sector is growing and it is expected to grow in the future. Both private companies and public organisations and institutions, at international, regional and local, can play an important role in introducing ethical codes of practices in forestry policies development, in forest resources management, in processing and trading wood and non-wood products and services, in investments, in purchasing commodities coming from responsible management. In order to approach these subjects, the course presents the institutional framework, where several international, regional and national environmental and forest institutions are involved in policy-making, funding, realising, analysing and monitoring the sustainable development of forestry, with different roles and responsibilities. An overview of the main topics which the international agendas are mainly focusing on (among others: illegal logging, green public procurements, public participation in environmental programmes, sustainable forest management standards, Kyoto protocol, etc.) is included. Specifically, after describing the driving forces and motivations related to the responsible behaviour of forest organisations and wood industry, the course will present an overview tools implemented by the private sector in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility.

 

Teaching and learning methods:

Lectures introduce the main relevant topics on ethics in forestry, describe roles and competences of institutions and other actors, encourage discussion and critical reflection of inter-connections among institutions and other actors, introduce the relevant processes for developing standards for sustainable forest management.

 

Examination:

An oral exam is conducted. Internal examiner.

 

Competences obtained:

(i) Comprehension of the main concepts related to ethics in forestry, (ii) deep knowledge of business and government ethics applied to the forestry sector, (iii) awareness of the global institutional framework and its complexity, (iv) basic knowledge on international institutional settings on environment, social-related issues and forests, (v) understanding of the main problems related to the lack of co-ordination and weaknesses of links among international institutions, (vi) basic knowledge on phenomena such as illegal logging and on sustainable forest management standards developing processes and their implications on forest policies implementation.