Advanced education: the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies is organizing the ECLIPSE the ethics of climate change: duties, responsibilities and challenges

To offer a comprehensive understanding of the complex issues related to climate change, the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa is organizing the advanced training course ‘ECLIPSE, the ethics of climate change: duties, responsibilities, and challenges.’ This interdisciplinary course provides conceptual tools for understanding and interpreting issues related to climate change and their impact on society, for present and future generations.
The course, under the scientific supervision of Alberto Pirni, associate professor of moral philosophy at the Dirpolis Institute of the Sant'Anna School, will take place in person at the Sant'Anna School from September 15 to 19, 2025. The deadline for applications is Monday, June 30, 2025. All information on the call for applications and how to apply is available at this link: https://www.santannapisa.it/it/alta-formazione/eclipse-ethics-climate-change-duties-responsibilities-and-challenges 

Who is the course aimed at and what are the learning objectives

The course is open to graduates, postgraduates, professionals, company employees and managers, civil servants, educators, technical staff, and trainers interested in deepening their understanding of climate change.

ECLIPSE's main objective is to provide attendees with the necessary critical tools to acquire interdisciplinary ethical skills for their application in physics, law and finance domains, and in all spheres of social interaction at interindividual, company, national, and international levels.

The course is designed to show climate change as a physical phenomenon with meteorological evidence, which entails ethical implications due to the consequence of actions, both on individual and collective levels. Choices and actions are also linked to law and finance as unavoidable parts of political decision-making processes from a national to the global point of view. The course has a strongly interdisciplinary focus, with the broader goal of stimulating and developing transversal skills.

The registration fee is €400.

Course topics

The course connects ethics with other disciplines to offer a comprehensive understanding of the complex issues related to climate change, emphasizing how justice must be conceived in terms of intergenerational justice. To achieve this, the program is structured into four didactic and scientific areas, complemented by two topic-oriented workshops.

The four areas are the following:

1. Ethics, with a conceptual overview on theories of reciprocity and intergenerational justice, sustainability, and behavioral change models;
2. Physics, with a general framework related to climate change, understood as a physical phenomenon involving meteorology and the composition of the atmosphere;
3. Law, with specific reference to the European and international legal framework reconstruction, in constant referring to the UNFCC COPs main documents and decisions (Dubai, Baku and the forthcoming Belém);
4. Finance, with a discussion about the climate finance possibilities and pledges at the international level, as well as their role in the “loss and damages” policies.

The two focus and correlative workshop are the following:

1. Water: The first topic-oriented workshop will be on the contemporary ethical and socio-economic challenges related to the individual usage and collective management of this fundamental resource, also with reference to its strategic role at the national and international level.
2. Energy: The second topic-oriented workshop will be on energy and its connections with climate change and development, with specific reference to energy justice domain, which will be addressed from a twofold perspective angle: the balancing between traditional sources and innovative sources; the necessary interplay between the “Global North” and the “Global South” of the planet.