Policy brief & debate

Initial situation

The two-week block format of the course leaves little time to work on a concrete object to be evaluated at the end of this period. The teacher’s idea is therefore to introduce students to project formulation, less with a view to producing a concrete research proposal, but rather to writing a policy brief. He proposes this objective while focusing on the essential elements to be acquired at the beginning of the Master’s degree, namely team spirit and the construction of a solidary group.

Project implementation

The overall objective of this course is for students to engage in a learning-by-doing process designed to simulate a typical challenge they might face in their professional careers. They are required to work with people they do not know, analyze a problem for which they do not know all the details, present a set of policy options to address the problem, and defend these options to various stakeholders.

To do this, each group of 4 students will select a sustainable development issue raised during the course or encountered in the field. The students must then identify 5 or 6 objectives or targets relevant to this issue, analyze the interactions between them, identify the actors and resources related to them and propose a set of recommendations to meet the chosen challenge. All of these analyses and recommendations are then discussed with the main stakeholders represented by the students.

After two weeks of classes, a presentation and debate in the form of a negotiation exercise is organized. Each group takes on two different roles in turn. The first and most important role is that of a committee of experts who are given the mandate to identify and analyze a sustainable development challenge. This is the role that students take on when presenting their project. The 2e role is that of a stakeholder group that reacts to the presentations and negotiates with the other stakeholder groups. Each group can adopt one of the following roles as a stakeholder group: environmental NGOs (WWF, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace), private sector actors in polluting sectors (oil or coal producers), citizen groups (groups that advocate for citizens’ civil rights), municipalities/local governments (city hall), scientists (International Social Science Council or International Association of Universities), and United Nations agencies. In order to play these roles, students must draw on the various stakeholders they have met during class sessions or field trips (NGOs, Red Cross, visits to the United Nations, the international district). The objective of these negotiations is not to find a consensus, but to identify the points of tension and offer other solutions, to seek alliances.

The activity lasts 1 hour and 5 minutes in total and is organized as follows: 15 minutes of presentation, 5 minutes of consultation between the stakeholder delegations, 15 minutes of statements by the delegations, 5 minutes of response by the presenters, 20 minutes of negotiations and 5 minutes of conclusion.

Following the debate, each group must produce a written policy brief that includes the chosen sustainability challenge, the objectives or targets, an analysis of the interactions, an overview of the actors and resources, a description of the proposed solutions and an overview of the positions of the stakeholder groups during the debate.

The evaluation of the course includes the presentation for 40% (organization, quality of the support, content), the management and quality of the debate for 20% (empathy/respect for the positions of others, authenticity of the role assumed, quality of the argumentation), and the final policy brief for 40%.

In order to accentuate the teambuilding objective of this course, a 2-day bootcamp in Chamonix is offered to students. During these two days, students will do group activities such as hiking, go into the field to observe the issues of sustainable development and meet actors in the field who present and discuss these issues in mountain regions.

Thoughts and advice

This two-week block format (days from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) is very dense, both for the teaching staff and for the students, who do not have enough time to complete their projects. The teacher notes however that it is ideal for developing a team spirit despite the fact that, from a pedagogical point of view, it is too concentrated to allow the students to appropriate the content. Nevertheless, it allows them to learn about the issues they will encounter in their professional lives, with the approach of knowing what solutions can be implemented.

The teacher emphasizes the importance of the creative dimension of the role-play, but also of the participation of the various speakers, from whom the students can draw inspiration to argue during the debate.

Student feedback

“I think a major contribution of this lecture is that it introduces the issue of intentions to students, which should indeed be a particular focus in at least one lecture about sustainability. As we are a very diverse group in terms of background, many students may arrive without having considered political agendas before. Showing us frameworks for considering stakeholders and making us prepare for role play as different ones helped sediment insights gained in readings.” “It was, in my opinion, an interesting way to start off the Master, in the sense that by being always together we quickly got to know each other. It was a great team-building exercise.” “The challenge of preparing that much in so little time is stimulating.”