The course aims to provide students with the cognitive, analytical and interpretative tools to understand and critically discuss the main processes that have animated the environment history in its international political, economic and social dynamics since 1945. Particular attention will be devoted to the analysis of the birth and development of the environmental issue in the context of the Cold War characterized by political-ideological tensions, a wild arms race and the immoderate desire of both the two superpowers to affirm the superiority of their model development without any respect for the environment and its rights. After 1991, the vulnerability of an increasingly global world, not only from an economic-financial point of view but also from the environment, has emerged in an incontrovertible manner and the ecological question has now become one of the most crucial issues of the international agenda. Therefore the students will have to have full mastery of the main categories of analysis on the theme and will have to recognize, in the development of historical dynamics, the complex connections between ideology, models of economic and demographic development, industrial and military policies in light of the evolution of the international system.