ASTK18365U Policy and Governance for Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks

Today’s culture is full of tales of apocalypse—of the world’s annihilation, and humanity’s destruction. And yet, in spite of (or because of) their prominence in popular culture, risks that could lead to global catastrophe, or which might even threaten the continued existence of mankind (‘existential risks’ remain an understudied topic). Indeed, global policymakers and regulators often have approached the topic with hesitance.

This is in spite of the increasingly tangible effects of runaway climate change; and in spite of the fact that ‘The Doomsday Clock’ has been set at its nadir at 100 seconds to midnight. Indeed, by some estimates, a typical person is more than five times as likely to eventually die in an extinction event, than (s)he is to die in a car crash.

In recent years, researchers have taken these concerns out of the realm of sci-fi, and articulated realistic near-future scenarios for catastrophe. A rapidly growing academic and policy field has coalesced in response to these threats, prominently at the Oxford Martin School and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. But despite the broadly interdisciplinary reaction to existential risks, the roles played by the policy, regulation, and governance both in empowering and mitigating these risks remain largely—and critically—unexplored.

Aims of the course

This course aims to fill this gap by challenging students to engage with what may be some of this century’s greatest challenges. It asks students to consider and craft policy regulatory, and governance solutions to the most pressing existential risks that confront humanity, as well as catastrophic risks which fall short of this threshold, but nonetheless would significantly impair humanity in the long term.

We aim to explore the literature on existential risks, and bring those concerns within a context of policy and governance. Thus, the aim of the course is to provide the students with a deeper understanding of existential risks and of policy and governance’s (in)ability to solve social, political and ecological problems.

The overarching questions explored in this course are:

•             What roles can policy and governance structures play in saving humanity?

•             Does existing law, regulation and governance channel humanity towards its own demise?

•             How might regulatory and governance concepts be developed towards minimising existential risks?

•             Are existing regulatory and governance precepts appropriate in the context of existential and catastrophic risks?

•             What are the limits of policy, law, regulation and governance in mitigating existential threats? What are the macro-scale implications of this?

Course format:

As this course investigates how policy, law, regulation and governance may create or expose humanity to vulnerabilities as well as how these might mitigate existential and catastrophic risks, it will be largely structured around the greatest threats to humanity as case studies. Such global hazards have dominated the study of existential risks, and provide ample material for honing our policy, legal, regulatory and governance responses.

Yet, spurred by research at the University of Copenhagen, there is increasing awareness that such grand hazards are only a part of the equation with regards to global catastrophes and existential risks. In order to bring policy, law, regulation and governance to bear on such problems – to be able to open such discussions – the issues need to become refocused on questions of exposure and vulnerability to such hazards. And to weave in ongoing cutting-edge work, we will also draw out the implications of interactional complexity in relation to global catastrophic and existential risk, which suggests that we do not need a spectacular hazard to precipitate the end of our world. Engaging students in a burgeoning ‘Copenhagen Approach’ to global catastrophic and existential risks, students are invited to forge their own paths for policy and governance research anchored on our work-in-progress at present.

This course will address, both at a theoretical and a practical level, policy, law, regulation and governance’s ability and efficacy in facing the challenges for human society at different levels: those beyond human control; those within certain parameters of human control; and those that are self-induced. The students will be invited to work creatively with their knowledge and to harness their interests, and test these in a deeply interdisciplinary context. The course will be student- and problem-driven, and each class will have compulsory materials (readings, videos, and case-materials) most relevant to the topic to be discussed, and be supplemented by a number of directly-relevant recommended/voluntary activities, including movie screenings.

Exam:

The students shall as conclusion to the course define, develop and defend a legal solution toward mitigating a catastrophic risk or existential risk of his or her choice. As such, this course straddles the boundary between research-integrated and research, by virtue of it being entirely student-driven and student-conducted.

This will be an individual written assessment, specifically a ten-page academic paper elaborating upon the development of the policy recommendation, coupled with a two-page policy brief succinctly summarising the research.

with special attention paid to both the recommendation’s efficacy and avowed limitations.