SPRING 2023

Senjahopen in Northern Norway, Photo: Reiner Schaufler

Humans cannot do without natural resources. Therefore, it is very important to manage these resources well. However, natural resources have often been poorly managed causing conflicts, economic losses, unemployment, poverty, and famines. Most explanations of over-utilization focus on the commons problem: fierce competition to extract resources and insufficient contributions to keep resources in good condition. This course recognizes the importance of the commons problem. However, it is even more important to ask why governments and private property owners have mismanaged resources over which they should have full control.

Mismanagement can be explained by the inherent complexity of natural resources such as fisheries, graze lands, underground water reservoirs, rain forests, biodiversity, and the climate? Often experts warn about looming problems without being listened to when it comes to policies and actions. For instance, while most people now accept the idea that there is man-made climate change going on, they do not vote for parties that favor sufficiently strong actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Using models and modern interactive learning environments (ILEs), the goal of this course is to contribute to better experts and to close the gap between experts and decision-makers - ranging from leaders to electorates.

A quote by Albert Einstein helps you understand what this course is about: "The problems of today must be solved at a higher level of thinking than that which led to the problems in the first place". First, the course explains why it is easy to misperceive the working of even simple dynamic systems. Next, the course presents simple models to improve thinking in order to find policies that have more desirable long-term effects. The selection of problems and methods reflects what I, lead instructor Erling Moxnes, understand to be most important to know about resources management. Other textbooks and courses make other selections. Much of the material in the course builds on research I have been involved in, where coauthors and I have tested hypotheses about misperceptions that lead to mismanagement. This research, which I refer to in the course, presents a wider background for the course material. It should be reassuring that the publications I refer to have passed the scrutiny of journal reviewers and editors in first class journals. The MOOC also builds on a vast amount of literature from different fields of study making it a truly interdisciplinary course.

As a motivation for the course, see the below video about new thinking that helped bring a resource system from a depleted state to a sustainable one - in practice.

If needed, click to see the official course description.

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