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Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD)

For this specialization we advise you to register in the Major Agrarian and Environmental Studies (AES), but other Majors also give access to this specialization.

Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD) prepares students to respond to the challenges posed by the global environmental crisis. It is informed by the awareness that the sustainability challenge cannot be addressed without understanding the interaction between local dynamics and global structures. The program is also built around the recognition that all environmental issues arise from a combination of natural as well as economic, political and cultural processes. The ESD specialization equips students with the theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience necessary to work or conduct research in this broad field.

Managing the environmental impact of economic processes is arguably the greatest challenge facing humanity. While the need to transition to sustainability is widely accepted, the concept of sustainable development and its newest variant ‘green economy’ remain vague, failing to provide a clear roadmap to a greener future. The specialization recognizes the unwillingness of developed nations and multinational corporations to make the dramatic changes necessary to reduce their impact on critical ecosystems and the challenges faced by developing nations and intergovernmental organizations that often lack the necessary resources to make effective environmental policies. ESD is built around two axioms: First, human development and poverty reduction cannot be fully achieved without making sustainability a central plank of international development policy. Second, sustainable development necessitates the transformation of dominant ideological paradigms and structures that relegate the environment into a secondary position in political and economic processes.

ESD trains students to critically analyse environmental problems and conflicts within specific local and regional contexts that arise from existing approaches to the extraction, use and management of natural resources.

Environment and Sustainable Development Courses

Global Environmental Politics

Politics and Economics of Natural Resource Management

Some Indicative Readings

Adams, W.M. (2008) Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in a Developing World, Routledge: London

Brockington, D, R. Duffy & J. Igoe (2008) Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas. London: Earthscan

Goldman, M. (2005) Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization, New Haven, CT: Yale UP

Newell, P. and M. Paterson (2010) Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and The Transformation of The Global Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge UP

Peet, R., P. Robbins, and M. Watts. Eds. (2011) Global Political Ecology. New York: Blackwell

Teaching staff


Murat Arsel is Associate Professor of Environment and Development. His research is focused on how authoritarian states create alternative environment and development policies within the context of neoliberal capitalism. He is currently working on natural resources conflicts in Ecuador, Turkey and China as well as writing on structural transformation, development theory and environmental social theory. He is one of the editors of the Development and Change. Murat has a BA from Clark University, MSc from the LSE, and MPhil and PhD from Cambridge. Email: arsel@remove-this.iss.nl

For more information, see: www.iss.nl/arsel


Ingrid L. Nelson is a post-doctoral researcher in ISS. Focusing on Mozambique and southern Africa more broadly, her current research interests include feminist political ecologies and the cultural politics of conservation and development interventions. Nelson will work with Dr. Büscher on his research project titled Nature 2.0: the political economy of conservation in online and Southern African environments. Nelson earned her Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oregon. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, she received her M.Phil. in geographical research at the University of Cambridge and her B.A. in geography modified with environmental studies at Dartmouth College. During her Ph.D. Nelson was a US Student Fulbright fellow hosted by Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique. Her dissertation examined gendered identity formation and contested forest ecologies in illegal logging and exotic monoculture timber plantation contexts in Zambézia Province, Mozambique. Email: nelson@remove-this.iss.nl


Bram Büscher is Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD from the VU University Amsterdam and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa from September 2008 to January 2012. He is one of the editors of Conservation and Society. His research interests revolve around (transfrontier) conservation/development interventions, green neoliberalism/capitalism, (eco)tourism and the political economy of energy. Email: buscher@remove-this.iss.nl.

For more information, see: www.iss.nl/buscher


Lorenzo Pellegrini is lecturer in Development Economics. He teaches courses on development and environmental economics. His interests lie in economics of institutions and governance, development economics, environmental and ecological economics. Applied research includes dynamics of deforestation and corruption, with fieldwork and household surveys in Pakistan.

For more information, see www.iss.nl/pellegrini

Sharmini Bisessar-Selvarajah is originally from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She holds an MBA in Management and Marketing, and a professional certificate in Total Quality Management. Sharmini joined ISS in 1998 and in 1999; she joined OEA and the Department of Rural Development, Environment and Population Studies. Since 2010, she is the staff group administrator for this department. She is also the programme administrator for the following specializations: Social Policy Development (SPD), short courses and refresher courses. Besides this she also manages the Bangladesh Water Development course. In addition, she is the management assistant of Initiative Critical Agrarian Studies.


Nalini Kramer-Harnam is the Programme Administrator for AES specializations in Agricultural and Rural Development (ARD) and Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD). She was born in Suriname and has lived in The Netherlands since 1977. She has worked at ISS since 1999, beginning with the Admissions Office. She has always enjoyed working with children, and has diplomas in childcare and secretarial courses.  During the past 7 years, she has taken several courses in Ayurveda health system (Ayurvedic Technician, Ayurvedic Food and Nutrition,  Ayurvedic Massage Therapist). Her Hobbies include Indian Kuchipudi dance. Email: harnam@remove-this.iss.nl.