Dr Tim Forsyth

For students taking MSc Development Studies, MSc Development Management, MSc International Political Economy, MSc Global Politics, MSc International Relations, MSc International Relations (Research), MSc International Relations Theory, MSc Population and Development, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc biomedicine, Bioscience and Society, MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public Policy and Management, MSc Regulation and MSc Regulation (Research) and for those taking other MSc programmes with the approval of the course teacher and their own programme directors.

The course reviews social and political debates about environment and development. It is about the institutions that regulate the interactions between society and the natural environment, at the local and national levels. A range of explanatory frameworks are introduced, with particular attention to sustainable development, political ecology, gendered resource access, common property regimes, natural hazards, community based natural resource management environmental social movements, and the politics of environmental science. We critically analyse a number of resource management institutions as promoted by donors, governments, academics, and practiced by local communities. We ask how these different institutions, and the politics surrounding them, impose constraints upon and present opportunities for environmental governance and the promotion of sustainable and equitable development. This course may be taken or audited with DV415, which focuses on global environmental governance.

Politics of sustainable development; political ecology; population and access to resources; gender environment and development; natural hazards; the politics of state environmental policy; common property regimes; community based natural resource management, and co-management of land and forests; environmental social movements in developing countries.

10 lectures (each of one-hour duration) and 9 seminar classes (each of one-hour duration) during MT.

One 1,500 word essay

A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first course meeting.

W M Adams, Green Development, Routledge, 2000; A. Agrawal, Environmentality, Duke, 2005. T Forsyth, Critical Political Ecology: the Politics of Environmental Science, Routledge, 2003; E Ostrom (et al), The Drama of the Commons: Understanding Common Pool Resource Management, National Academy Press, 2002; R Peet & M Watts (Eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, Routledge 2004.

Two-hour examination (80%) and an essay of no more than 2,000 words (20%).