Compulsory Courses

Course 1: Issues and Driving Forces
Growth and nature of environmental awareness, values and perceptions. Critical issues in current and future environmental change in terrestrial, atmospheric, aquatic and marine systems. The forces driving change including population growth and consumption, resource scarcity, climate, patterns of energy use, ecosystem changes, thresholds and sustainability.

Course 2: Managing the Environment
The nature of environmental management at various levels, the household and consumer behaviour, the business perspective, special interest groups, national and international action and co-operation. The formal legal framework. How the above are mediated by cross-cutting dimensions of a legal, economic, ethical, cultural and ecological nature.

Course 3: Methods and Techniques for Environmental Management
Basic computing and environmental modelling, sociological and ecological experimental design, data acquisition and handling, risk assessment, GIS and remote sensing, surveys and monitoring.

For specific modules and lectures please see the Course Handbook.

Elective Courses

Students have to complete 2 elective courses (one per term). Elective courses are offered in collaboration with the other MSc courses offered by the School of Geography and the Environment. Enrollment is open to all MSc students. These consist of tutorials in small groups, and are assessed through an extended essay. Available electives vary from year to year, these currently include:

Michaelmas Term

• Climate and justice
• Balance, bias and complexity in climate change journalism
• Energy and the environment
• Forest governance
• Heritage conservation
• Payment for ecosystem services design
• Global environmental change and food security
• Indigenous people and the environment
• International climate politics
• Political ecology
• Managing extremes: the theory and practice of flood risk management
• Community organizing for environmental action
• Social responses to climate change
• Water and development
• Business and sustainable development

Hilary Term

• Cities, sustainable transport and mobility
• Energy policy
• Managing dynamic and complex environments
• Climate change – science, impacts and adaptation
• Corporate social and environmental accountability
• Energy resource assessment
• Environmental governance in China
• Governing protected areas
• Politics of oil and gas
• Land degradation
• Environmental publics: from political theory to public engagement methodologies
• Conceptual debates in human geography
• Environmental theory and practice in communist and post-communist russia
• Resilience, adaptation and development

For more information please see the Electives Booklet.

Friday Workshops

MSc ECM students will sign-up for 2 or more workshops in Michaelmas Term and Hilary Term. These will be all- or half-day events e.g. 9.30am - 4pm. The friday workshops will include; lectures, discussions, report-back and will be supplemented with reading material in advance. Typical workshops include:

Michaelmas Term

• Biological surveys and design of experiments
• CDM in theory and practice
• Facing water scarcity
• Environmental campaigning and how to use the media as a campaign tool
• Sustainable businesses

Hilary Term

• Understanding of science and the media
• Environmental education
• Water management and pollution in the UK
• Stakeholders and research
• Environmental consultancy
• Ecological economics
• Residential field visit to Brussels

For more information please see the Course Handbook.

Field Trips

There are a number of residential field trips per year, which are designed to illustrate specific aspects of the course and introduce students to management issues and the professionals who deal with them. Typical field trips include:

• Slapton Field Centre, South Devon
  Management issues in a National Nature Reserve and along a changing coastline
• Dale Fort Field Centre, Pembrokeshire, Wales
  Marine ecosystem science and conservation in protected areas and industrial settings
• Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Wales
  Evaluating alternative energy sources and their impacts
• Brussels, Belgium
  European environmental policy and governance
  NB: Please note that this field trip is voluntary and not paid for by the ECI. You may require a visa and it is your responsibility to organise one.
• Blencathra Field Centre, Threlkeld, Cumbria
  Management issues in a National Park (the Lake District)

For more information please see the Course Handbook.

Dissertation

A dissertation forms a major part of the course, and provides an opportunity for individual, original and specialised in-depth work on some aspects of environmental change and management.

Download a list of past dissertation titles. [PDF: 184KB]