GG2509: ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY (2023-2024)

Study of the relationship between people and their environment is perhaps the most durable of geography's core traditions. The spatial diversity of the natural environment, the distribution of resources, and the associated opportunities or constraints for socio-economic development dominated much of the work done in the first few decades of the discipline's existence as a recognised school and university subject. In the second half of the twentieth century, as the negative impact of human activities on the environment became increasingly obvious, other disciplines - such as the natural sciences, economics, sociology and politics - also started to think of the environment as part of their territory. The rise of the environment as a pervasive, but often ill-defined or disputed, 'real world' issue was matched by the proliferation of ideas about how best to study it, drawn from all parts of the academic spectrum. This course provides a survey of some of the most important of these current environmental issues (e.g., biodiversity, climate change, natural hazards, organic foods, sustainable transport, water resources), examined from various conceptual perspectives (e.g., earth systems science, political ecology, risk and vulnerability, social construction of nature). Although the diversity of environmental debates and the different perspectives that sustain and/or explain these provides the core theme of the course, coursework will give students the opportunity to focus on topics of particular interest.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

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There are no assessments for this course.