121-525 The Political Ecology of Development

Admission to a postgraduate coursework program or fourth year honours in development studies, environmental studies, geography or anthropology, or permisssion of the subject coordinator.

The subject provides postgraduate and honours students with a critical understanding of the institutions that regulate the interactions between society and the natural environment, using a political ecology perspective. The topics explored in this subject will help students understand why development, conservation, and resource management (as an ideal, or in an actual project setting) fails or succeeds, or why environmental degradation results. This subject focuses on the international development 'industry', in its multiple guises, and thus on the environmental and social outcomes of specific development policies. Firstly, we introduce and discuss a range of explanatory frameworks that political ecologists have developed, showing how they have been applied in practice. We critically analyze a number of development initiatives that are reconstituting human-environment relationships and, in some cases, promoting new forms of 'environmental governance'. The range of topics may change each year, and some indicative ones are; supporting rural livelihoods; water management; conservation policy; urban environmental governance; gender and environment; and the outcomes of corporate misdeeds. Students will ask how different institutions, and the politics surrounding them, impose constraints upon, and present opportunities for, the promotion of sustainable and equitable development. Students of this subject will learn appreciate the complexity of these issues, and the need to analyse and understand them before initiating development planning.

• develop critical skills and analysis in this area of environment and development, spanning issues normally kept apart including human impacts on the environment, and the sociopolitical and environmental driving forces of these impacts;

• understand some of the complexities surrounding development and environment, which is particularly important for those seeking employment in the resource management and development sector;

• deepen knowledge about international development workings and their regional effects through case studies;

• research a major independent paper using a variety of sources;

• communicate verbally in seminar format.

An essay of 4000 words 80% (due at the end semester), an oral presentation 10% (during the semester), seminar participation throughout the semester 10%. The last two components are equivalent to 1000 words.

A subject reader will be available on the Learning Management System at the start of semester.