The life of environmental numbers

We start this course from the perspective that environmental numbers are not static entities, or given facts, but have a life of their own. Often born in a very specific place — a laboratory, a field survey, a consultant's office — they sometimes get the chance to leave that place and travel through other worlds: administration, politics, media, activism. Along the way, some become famous, invoked far beyond where they were made; others are quietly forgotten in the corner of a report, or resurface transformed by controversy and politicization. Moving from one world to another, environmental numbers can come to convey very different things, sitting, as they so often do, at the intersection of knowledge and power, science and action.

In this course, environmental numbers do not just describe the world — they are constitutive parts of it, and therefore make things happen. An indicator can stall a construction project, a ranking can shame a company into action, an assessment can quietly decide whose land matters. Environments are shaped through and through by our ways of measuring them.

With this approach in mind, we would like our students to look under the hood of environmental numbers' production and circulation, and to ask: How is a given figure assembled and produced (techniques, instruments, methodologies, standards, actors, categories, etc.)? How, and by whom, are those numbers used and translated into other arenas (political, legal, etc.)? What claims are attached to those numbers, and why does it matter for understanding environmental issues? In other words, we would like to introduce students to the "making of" environmental numbers and what makes a number environmental.

And to explore the tumultuous life of environmental numbers, what better starting point than a local controversy in which numbers are not yet fully stabilised, not yet fully accepted as matters of fact, but remain matters of concern? This year, we will open the course by examining the controversy surrounding the Union Saint-Gilloise stadium project at the Bempt site in Brussels — a case where competing figures on biodiversity, soil, and ecological value have become central to a dispute among the club, regional authorities, consultants, and civil society actors. Students will visit the site and hear directly from some of the actors involved in the controversy.

From there, we will extend the scope to other forms of environmental numbers, other practices, and other locations. Students will also have the opportunity to test and experiment with hands-on exercises — on the production of environmental numbers (through a multi-criteria decision-making analysis based on a self-chosen situation), and on developing critical thinking about environmental numbers and the different stages of their life.

 

Content

• Environmental numbers as scientific knowledge production
• Other sources of environmental number production: action research, citizen science, modelling and prediction, doughnut and SDG (ODD) indicators, ecosystem services monetization and optimization
• Decision support systems, with a focus on multi-criteria decision-making
• Uses of numbers: sensibilization, dissemination, consumer decisions, industry decisions
• Introduction to the sociology, anthropology, and history of environmental numbers

The overall final aim is that the students

• gain an overview of the life(s) of environmental numbers
• acquire knowledge about the production of numbers
• acquire knowledge of decision support systems and practical competences in multi-criteria decision analysis
• develop critical thinking about environmental numbers and the different stages of their life

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

- ENVI F 452
- ENVI F 409

The course will combine ex cathedra seminars, case studies, discussions, invited speakers, and practical work. It will be taught in English; however, given our commitment to grounding the course in concrete, local situations, some presentations may be delivered in French. These will be translated (we will try to ensure live subtitles; if this is not possible, we will provide translated minutes the following day) and further discussed in English for non-French-speaking participants. The course will be organised in blocks, opening with one intensive week (September 28th to October 2nd, 2026) and followed by a series of contact moments, allowing sufficient time for group work on the multi-criteria analysis and on a popularizing publication about a self-chosen environmental number.

Course notes

• Université virtuelle

Contacts

Wouter Achten – Wouter.Achten&ulb.be
Gregoire Benzakin – Gregoire.benzakin@ulb.be

Campus

Other campus, Outside campus ULB

Method(s) of evaluation

• written examination
• Practice exam
• Group work
• Oral presentation

written examination

Practice exam

Group work

Oral presentation

The Evaluation will go in 2 steps:

• Student groups will be asked to make a group work on a multicriteria problem, which they need to solve through the PROMETHEE software of Yves De Smet. This work will need to be submitted by the exam session (Jan 2027)  and will be evaluated by Yves De Smet (or replacement)
• Groups of 3–4 students pick an environmental number or assessment tied to their assigned theme or the Bempt controversy, then trace its "biography" — from its birth (the problem it was meant to answer and what was left out), through its conception (the actors, instruments, and standards that made it computable), to its translations (how it moved across legal, media, or activist contexts and what changed along the way), and its effects (who it empowers, excludes, or renders visible, and whether it's since been contested or revised). Framing the exercise as journalism-on-commission, students turn this trace into a short public-facing piece (social post, infographic, newspaper viewpoint, podcast, etc.) aimed at a broad audience, backed by a written report documenting their sources, critical assessment, and editorial choices — since the publication may be challenged, the report serves as their evidence trail. The assignment closes with peer review: groups submit their work (deadline: Nov 20th 23h59), receive another group's piece to "challenge," and then defend their own in a presentation and discussion session (Nov 27th).

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

The Decision Support part will represent 1/3 of the 20 points, and the Vulgarizing publication, report and presentation/defense will represent the remaining 2/3 of the points.
In case 1 of the two parts is absent (work not delivered), the global score will also be an ABS

Language(s) of evaluation

• english
• (if applicable english )