Partners

Contemporary environmental challenges require preventive, interdisciplinary and international responses. In recent decades, Europe has become the global leader in identifying and promoting such responses through pioneering technical, management and policy solutions to environmental problems at the national, EU and global levels.

MESPOM is designed to further strengthen this area of European competitiveness. The Consortium partners have more than 50 years of combined experience in delivering interdisciplinary environmental Masters courses to international students, complementary core competencies (CEU – in environmental policy in transition countries, Lund University – in preventive environmental strategies, the University of Manchester – in pollution control, and the University of the Aegean – in sustainable development of islands and isolated areas) creating a solid platform for a high quality, truly integrated and globally relevant Masters Course .

Together the Consortium partners have more than 50 years of providing interdisciplinary environmental Masters courses to international students, including Europe’s oldest MSc in Pollution and Environmental Control at UoM (delivered since 1971), CEU’s MSc in Environmental Sciences and Policy (delivered since 1994 and validated by UoM), IIIEE’s MSc in Environmental Management and Policy (since 1995) and UoA’s MSc in Environmental Policy and Management (since 1998).

MESPOM will advance a truly European perspective on the environment through combining Nordic, Mediterranean, Western and Central European scholarly traditions and practical approaches.

• The Nordic perspective is represented by the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, a European leader in research and advanced education on preventive environmental strategies. The image of Nordic countries being unchallenged global leaders in "ecological modernization" of public agencies and private corporations is supported by the research and education at the IIIEE, which demonstrates the feasibility of combining economic competitiveness and environmental protection.
• The Mediterranean perspective is represented by the University of the Aegean whose strong interdisciplinary research team works on biodiversity, nature conservation, ecosystems and resource management and valuation, and integrated spatial planning with a focus on tourism. Its expertise on sustainable managment of islands and isolated areas is highly relevant to many countries in the East Mediterranean and worldwide.
• The Western European perspective is represented by the University of Manchester whose School of Environmental, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences and the Faculty of Life Sciences are European and global leaders in environmental issues and biosciences. Manchester provides an ideal setting for environmental research and education, as the cradle of the industrial revolution where many of the contemporary environmental pollution problems were defined and analyzed and where scientific and practical solutions were found.
• The Central European perspective is represented by the Central European University , an international post-graduate university created in 1991 to support the post-communist transformation of Central and Eastern Europe. CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy is a European center of research excellence on environmental policy and issues in emerging democracies. Students and scholars from more than 70 countries have been attracted to CEU to learn from the lessons of Central Europe in combining economic, political and environmental reforms.