In 2015, global leaders committed themselves to 17 Sustainable Development Goals, putting sustainable development at the heart of the global development endeavour. Climate change, degraded natural resources and the distribution of power and resources in managing the environment challenge poverty reduction efforts. This module introduces students to key concepts, literature and debates to investigate relationships between poverty and the environment, drawing on political ecology, environmental economics and common property theory. The module is informed by the 2015 book by the convenor, Dr Nunan, ‘Understanding Poverty and the Environment: Analytical Frameworks and Approaches’, published by Routledge.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Be able to critically engage with and understand the complexity of sustainable development;
Be able to critically engage with the politics of sustainable development and its relationship to poverty and justice;
Understand and be able to critically debate the issue of climate change through different disciplinary and geographical perspectives;
Explore different approaches to addressing sustainable development issues, in order to distil possible ‘best practices’ in developing and integrating a sustainable development strategy and politics involved in implementing such a strategy.
