The main objectives of the course are: 1. Acquiring the key analytical tools relevant to understand current development challenges. 2. Developing the ability to diagnose context-specific developmental problems. This ability requires combining the pertinent theoretical mechanisms with historically determined empirical cases, adapting them to the natural, economic and institutional context. 3. Practising the skills of processing and transmitting academic information and translating it at the policy-making level.

-Developing countries, urgent sustainability problems and different approaches and strategies. The objectives of sustainable development, their adaptation and various challenges in developing countries. -Institutions, platforms and global governance initiatives on developing countries, their effectiveness and legitimacy. -International trade and its socioeconomic and ecological impact on the Global South. Diverse levels of threats to biodiversity generated by trade and tools to mitigate them. -International capital flows in and out of developing countries. The policy and practice of multinational companies in the South; the investment processes by the multinationals of the South in the rest of the world. -Development models and perspectives: their transformations due to economic, political and climate crisis. Questioning of neoliberalism and emergence of different models such as ¿green developmentalism¿; impact of the pandemic on the transformation of development thinking, respective strategies and policy instruments. -Environmental justice, varying perspectives and initiatives.

Lectures -Practical sessions -Tutorials -Team paper/ write up -Presentations -Debates -Final exam or individual assignment