Â鶹´«Ã½ÉçÇøÈë¿Ú

Critical Debates in Environment and Development (928AF)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll explore debates about the environment and development. These include controversies around ‘market-based approaches’ and offsetting, and whether they support sustainability. You’ll also consider big questions about geoengineering, such as whether we should try to alter the planet’s ‘thermostat’.

You’ll examine:

• debates about forest policies like REDD+, and why some social movements oppose them
• how climate change, conservation and biofuels give new value to land and sea
• how these developments create new social inequalities, such as ‘land grabbing’
• how policy connects climate change with migration and conflict
• how new legal developments are giving rights to nature
• the role of earth law in shaping environmental futures
• how environmental science and futures has been shaped by political populism. 

You’ll build key research skills, including analysis and using evidence to support your arguments. You’ll also explore how inequality and injustice affect the success of environmental policies.

Guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, universality and fairness, you’ll learn to think critically. You’ll engage with current research about mainstream views of development. Readings will draw on human geography, anthropology, political ecology and historical ecology, offering perspectives from diverse and often marginalised voices. 

Through these debates, you’ll:

• explore how power, environmental knowledge and policy are connected
• evaluate how these links shape poverty, science and global environmental change
• reflect how globalisation is transforming relationships between environmental science and policy globally. 

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 66 hours of contact time and about 234 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2025/26. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.