The specialisation in Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD) focuses on the structures, processes and agents that shape the relationship between societies and their natural environments. The analytical approach is informed by the awareness that the challenge of sustainable development cannot be addressed without a clear understanding of the interaction between local dynamics and global structures. The ESD path presents students with the necessary theoretical knowledge, economic tools, and policy analysis skills to operate as effective professionals in the world of governmental, non-governmental and international organizations, as well providing them with a sound academic grounding for doctoral research. Upon completion, the participants in the ESD Specialisation will develop:

•An interdisciplinary understanding of the global environmental crisis;

•A conceptual framework which recognizes that all environmental issues arise from a combination of natural as well as economic, political and cultural processes;

•A critical perspective on the political and economic structures that shape local, national and international environmental outcomes;

•Hands-on experience in collecting, analyzing and disseminating different types of social scientific data required for sustainable development planning;

•The skills and tools necessary to critique and transform unsustainable development and resource management policies in developed and developing countries.

Sustainable development is one of the greatest challenges facing the international community. Unfortunately, the importance of addressing growing environmental problems and conflicts is only now beginning to be appreciated by many developing and developed nations, with others still desperately lagging. Similarly, multinational corporations and intergovernmental organizations have been largely ineffective in balancing the sustainability prerogative with economic considerations. It is evident, however, that the goals of human development and poverty reduction cannot be fully achieved without making sustainability a central plank of international development policy and planning. This, in turn, necessitates the transformation of dominant ideological paradigms and structures that relegate the environment into a secondary position in political and economic processes.



This Specialisation prepares the students to understand the salience of such a transformation for both developed and developing countries. Students learn to analyze environmental problems and conflicts within specific local and regional contexts and to appreciate the problems arising from existing approaches to the extraction, use, management of natural resources. Through this Specialisation, students will develop a critical political economic understanding of the obstacles to sustainable development and the skills necessary to participate in the design and evaluation of sustainable development policies. The coursework in the specialisation is built around an approach that considers the challenge of sustainable development as a political, economic and social process that can best be understood from different spatial scales through interdisciplinary inquiry. A variety of critical, analytical and constructive techniques deployed throughout the major path help create a comprehensive understanding of the concept of sustainability that balances theoretical and practical considerations.



Indicative readings:

Adams, William M. (2001). Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in: the Third World. 2nd ed. London, Routledge.

Bassett, Thomas J. and Donald Crummey, eds. (2003). African Savannas. Gobal

Narratives & Local Knowledge of Environmental Change, Oxford, James Currey.

Berkes, Fikret and Carl Folke, eds. (2000). Linking Social and Ecological Systems:

Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Bryant, Raymond L. and Sinéad Bailey (1997). Third World Political Ecology. London, Routledge.

Dalby, Simon (2002). Environmental Security. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Forsyth, Tim (2003). Critical political ecology: the politics of environmental science.

London and New York: Routledge.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas (1999). Environment Scarcity and Violence. Princeton, NJ,

Princeton University Press.

Morrow, Betty H., Walter G. Peacock and Hugh Gladwin, eds. (1997). Hurricane Andrew. Ethnicity, Gender and the Sociology of Disasters. London, Routledge.

Moseley, William and B. Ikubolajeh Logan, eds. (2004). African Environment and

Development: Rhetoric, Programs, Realities. Aldershot, Burlington, VT, Ashgate.

Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for

Collective Action. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Painter, Michael and William H. Durham, eds. (1995). The Social Causes of

Environmental Destruction in Latin America. Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press.

Peet, Richard and Michael Watts, eds. (1996). Liberation Ecologies – environment,

development, social movements. London, Routledge.

Peluso, Nancy Lee (1992). Rich Forests, Poor People. Resource Control and Resistance in Java. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, Oxford, University of California Press.

Rocheleau, Dianne, Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Esther Wangari (1996). Feminist

Political Ecology – global issues and local experiences. London, Routledge.

Trawick, Paul (2003). The Struggle for Water in Peru. Comedy and Tragedy in the

Andean Commons. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Sustainable development, environmental policy and politics, ecological economics, political ecology, resource management