Environment and Development

Course Objective

The aim of the Environment & Development course is to enable you as a student to examine and critically reflect on the relationships between economic and social development, and the environment.

After completion of the course you are able to:

• recognise and describe the current and potential impacts of the major international environmental concerns;
• recognise, analyse and explain the complexities of environmental issues related to development at a global level;
• distinguish, analyse and explain different perspectives on environmental problems and possible solutions;
• recognise organisational and governance issues related to environment and development and be able to think through their consequences for actual practices.

Moreover, as a student you learn to find, analyse and critically reflect on scientific literature within a relevant topic and become a project team member in a research environment, presenting and discussing the researched topic to an audience.

Course Content

What do we mean by the concepts of environment and development and how are the two related? What are the causes and consequences of global environmental change? How is the global community dealing with ecological problems? How can the world adequately feed more than 9 Billion people by 2050? Is sustainable development, with its notions of environmental 'friendliness', really achievable? During the course we will address these and other critical and societally relevant questions.

Sustainable economic development and sustainable environmental management are two key challenges facing the world today. The relationship between development problems and environmental issues is complex and transboundary – it cuts across the globe. The way we, as a society, allocate financial, human and natural resources directly influences how we manage local, national and global environments. The Environment & Development course is about understanding the world we live in and questioning the sustainability of our choices as individuals and as members of society.

The E&D course takes a multi- and interdisciplinary perspective and looks both at: (1) Global Issues - such as environment-trade-poverty links; and (2) Local Issues - focusing on land degradation, deforestation, water scarcity and how these have an impact on human development. The course comprises a series of lectures by both VU staff as well as guest lecturers from academia, NGOs and the private sector.

By means of illustrated case studies from all over the world, students learn to appreciate the complexity and interlinked nature of environmental and development issues at both global and local levels. Furthermore, we encourage students to develop their own (critical) opinion regarding current (and potential) international environmental challenges and their impacts.

Additional Information Teaching Methods

Mandatory (guest) lectures, working group assignments and exercises, field trip, tutorials.

Method of Assessment

A mix of group assignments (presentations) and individual assignments (research paper), as well as peer reviewed assignments (trip report).

Literature

Each week, a selection of articles will be posted on Canvas to be studied in advance, check the course manual also (on Canvas).

Students will discuss the literature via weekly discussions. For background reading on the key concepts in this class we will use "Paths to a Green World: the political economy of the global environment" by Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne (2011) 2nd edition. Cambridge - MIT Press.

Additional Information Target Audience

The E&D course is open to third year VU bachelor students, including exchange students, who join the full Minor Development & Global Challenges.

Additional Information

Comments from former students on the group assignments:

"We learned a lot from each other, our ideas, strengths and beliefs as well as how difficult it can be to address a topic that not many studies have covered so far, and how important it is to narrow down and focus more on specific topics to get relevant results".

"What we learned most from this assignment was that everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses and that each person's strengths can be used to the fullest extent to create an overall comprehensive and informative presentation".

"The group project was demanding and difficult at times, but it taught us a lot and made us realize how lucky we were to be in a good group with members who all put a lot of effort to finish a project that we were happy with".

"We learned a lot from this group project, especially about our subject on food loss: how important it is to address the complicated and complex problem that food loss is to our planet and society. We found our topic very interesting and would have liked to delve deeper into the subject if we had more time".

Recommended background knowledge

Interest in environmental issues and social questions