Forestry, Nature and Society - International Management (AM FNS-IM)

In response to current and urgent issues affecting the natural environment, the Advanced Master’s program “Forestry, Nature, and Society – International Management” (AM FNS-IM) offers a post-MSc year-long training course to 8-15 auditors. The program’s specificity is to: (1) offer a number of key teachings in social sciences (sociology, economics, political, and management sciences) applied to natural resources management, and (2) combine these with courses in the technical and scientific aspects of temperate and tropical forest management.

Understanding the relationships between the three main levels of operationality for the environment - local, national and international – is crucial today. Natural ecosystems, and in particular forest ecosys-tems, present major environmental and social concerns related to sustainable development. Climate change, biodiversity, desertification, soil erosion, regulation of hydrosystems are all central issues that society is now, timidly attempting to cope with. Tropical forests are facing threats from industrial exploi-tation, agricultural expansion and imminent destruction on a scale never known before. In the meanwhile temperate forests are growing and expanding because of rural depopulation, and changing social de-mands.

The course addresses issues related to the capacity of public authority regulations, good governance and private actions of both NGOs and firms (e.g. certifications, global value chains) to address these pressing environmental challenges. It prepares engineers and Master’s students in maintaining and managing the services needed to sustain these threatened areas in a context of global development and changing eco-logical environmental management.