Unit information: Environmental Policy and Politics in 2012/13

Unit name	Environmental Policy and Politics
Unit code	GEOGM1409
Credit points	20
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Fairbrother
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	All core Term 1 units for the MSc in Environmental Policy and Management
Co-requisites	All core Term 2 units for the MSc in Environmental Policy and Management
School/department	School of Geographical Sciences
Faculty	Faculty of Science

Description including Unit Aims

This unit provides an advanced introduction to the kinds of decisions that governments and other public authorities make with respect to the environment (governance), and conflicts over those decisions and/or over who has the authority to make them (politics). The unit will consider administrative/political scales ranging from the local to the global, and actors ranging from individuals to international organisations. The unit aims:

• To familiarise students with the dilemmas and trade-offs that governments face in making decisions with respect to the natural environment.
• To familiarise students with key themes and findings in academic research on environmental governance and politics.
• To enable students to undertake sophisticated analyses of environmental policy debates.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

• Identify the key actors in environmental governance and politics, at scales ranging from the local to the global, as well as those actors’ environmental priorities and the sources of those priorities.
• Analyse specific cases of environmental conflict; locate background information about those conflicts that allows them to understand the key actors, stakes, and sources of the conflict; and identify constructive roles for scientific research in resolving and/or illuminating the conflict.
• Identify successful and failed cases of international environmental cooperation

Teaching Information

The unit will be centred on a weekly two-hour seminar. Each week, the instructor will provide an initial informal lecture. After that, the instructor will organise structured small-group, problem-oriented discussions among the seminar participants. At some point during the term, the instructor will arrange for a guest speaker from the environmental governance field to visit the seminar and describe his/her work

Assessment Information

(1) Industry Analysis (worth 30%; maximum 1000 words). Each week some students will circulate draft versions of this, for others to read and for the instructor to provide feedback on. (2) One 3500 word essay (worth 70%) completed at the end of the unit, describing and analysing an issue in environmental policy and politics, of the student’s choice. The first two pages of the essay will consist of a Policy Memo, summarising the issue for a hypothetical policymaker audience.

Reading and References

Jordan, Andrew, Dave Huitema, Harro van Asselt, Tim Rayner, and Frans Berkhout (eds.). 2010. Climate Change Policy in the European Union: Confronting the Dilemmas of Mitigation and Adaptation? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baland, Jean-Marie, Pranab Bardhan, and Samuel Bowles (eds.). 2007. Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Biermann, Frank, and Philipp Pattberg. 2008. “Global Environmental Governance: Taking Stock, Moving Forward.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 33:277–94. Endres, Alfred. 2011. Environmental Economics: Theory and Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ferraro, Paul J. 2009. “Counterfactual Thinking and Impact Evaluation in Environmental Policy.” New Directions for Evaluation 122: 75–84. Lambin, Eric F., et al. 2001. “The Causes of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change: Moving Beyond the Myths.” Global Environmental Change 11: 261–269. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.