This course investigates the geopolitical and geoeconomic transformations unleashed by the global shift toward decarbonization and digitalization, catalyzed by the Paris Agreement and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As major powers compete to secure critical minerals and technological capabilities central to green and digital transitions, new power dynamics are reshaping climate policy, economic strategy, and international relations.

Resource competition now extends beyond traditional energy systems to include food systems and oceanic resources, increasingly viewed as components of global green infrastructure. Simultaneously, digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and data-intensive systems are intensifying demand for energy and material inputs, complicating climate ambition and linking it closely to questions of supply chains, infrastructure, and control. The monetization and securitization of these systems are producing overlapping frameworks of governance and fi nance spanning national regulation, international law, and emerging standards.

Students will analyze how geopolitics and evolving legal, regulatory, and financial architectures reshape industrial strategies for climate and technological transformation while exposing a growing governance gap in the management of resources, supply chains, and emerging technologies. The course also examines questions of social and economic justice, exploring how resource competition and governance gaps may widen global inequalities and reinforce power asymmetries between developed and developing nations.