1
CONTENTS
General Information ..........................................................................................................................................................4
Assessment ........................................................................................................................................................................4
Elective Marking Criteria ...................................................................................................................................................5
MICHAELMAS TERM .........................................................................................................................................................7
Animal Controversies ........................................................................................................................................................7
Elective Leader: Dr Beth Greenhough
ASEAN Environments.........................................................................................................................................................9
Elective Leaders: Dr Paul Jepson and Dr Mari Mulyani
Corporate Social and Environmental Accountability...................................................................................................... 15
Elective Leader: Professor Gordon L. Clark
Energy and the Environment .......................................................................................................................................... 20
Elective Leaders: Dr Christian N. Jardine and Dr Sarah Darby
Environmental Remote Sensing ..................................................................................................................................... 23
Elective Leader: Dr Chris Doughty
Flood Risk Management: Water Security in theory and practice .................................................................................. 24
Elective Leader: Professor Edmund Penning-Rowsell
Indigenous Peoples and Environments .......................................................................................................................... 27
Elective Leader: Dr Thomas Thornton
International Environmental Law ................................................................................................................................... 33
Elective Leader: Dr Catherine MacKenzie
International Climate Politics and Governance .............................................................................................................. 35
Elective Leaders: Dr Harro van Asselt, Dr Chuks Okereke and Dr Dominic Roser
Water Security and Poverty ........................................................................................................................................... 40
Elective Leaders: Dr Katrina Charles and Dr Robert Hope
HILARY TERM ................................................................................................................................................................. 43
Analytical Skills in GIS ..................................................................................................................................................... 43
Elective Leader: Dr Robert Dunford
Cities, Mobility and Climate Change .............................................................................................................................. 45
Elective Leader: Dr Tim Schwanen
Cities without Slums: policies and the urban poor......................................................................................................... 49
Elective Leader: Dr Katrina Charles
CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER ................................................................................................................. 52
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|2
Elective Leaders: Professor Myles Allen and Dr Friederike Otto
Climate Change, Communication and the Media .......................................................................................................... 55
Elective Leader: Dr James Painter
Ecosystem Services for Development ............................................................................................................................ 57
Elective Leaders: Dr Alex Morel and Dr Mark Hirons
Energy Policy .................................................................................................................................................................. 60
Elective Leader: Dr Nick Eyre
Environment and Development: Trade-offs or win-wins? ............................................................................................. 62
Elective Leader: Dr Camilla Toulmin
Global Environmental Change and Food Systems .......................................................................................................... 65
Elective Leader: Dr John Ingram
Politics of Oil and Gas ..................................................................................................................................................... 68
Elective Leaders: Dr Kärg Kama and Dr Caitlin McElroy
Rewilding and Its Place in Future Conservation Strategies ............................................................................................ 70
Elective Leader: Dr Keith Kirby
The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity................................................................................................. 74
Elective Leaders: Dr Erik Gomez-Baggethun
The Forest Governance Group ....................................................................................................................................... 76
Elective Leader: Dr Connie McDermott
Urban Ecologies .............................................................................................................................................................. 79
Elective Leader: Dr Maan Barua
Urban Water and Wastewater ....................................................................................................................................... 82
Elective Leader: Dr David W.M. Johnstone
World Inequalities .......................................................................................................................................................... 85
Elective Leader: Professor Danny Dorling
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|3
ELECTIVE MODULES 2015-16
General Information
Electives provide a small-group forum for learning within the MSc/MPhil programme. MSc students select
one assessed elective in Michaelmas Term and one in Hilary Term, and MPhil students may select an
additional elective in their second year. Electives are led by tutors and provide 8 hours of teaching spread
over 4-6 weeks. In most cases, the maximum number of students per elective is ten. We reserve the right
not to run an elective if it is under-subscribed.
Students will not be allowed to change electives after the initial meeting, except under exceptional
circumstances. Although we do our best to place each student in their preferred elective, with the overriding
aim of providing small group teaching we cannot guarantee matching elective places with preferences due
to differential demand.
Assessment
Summative Assessment
Electives are assessed on the basis of a final essay of up to 4,000 words (exclusive of references and
appendices), plus a 150-word abstract. The topic for the essay must be approved by the elective leader
before the end of the term and essays are due at the beginning of the next term. Students are required to
work independently on their assignments.
Assessed essays must be submitted to Examination Schools by noon on the
following dates:
Michaelmas Term elective
Hilary Term elective
Monday 18th January 2016
Monday 25th April 2016
Formative Assessment
To prepare students for their assessed essays, elective leaders will set and give written feedback on at least
two written assignments.
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Elective Marking Criteria
MARK
RANGE
%
MARKING CRITERIA FOR PROJECTS/ESSAY
90
A truly exceptional piece of work, of sufficient quality for publication. Evidence of
novel ideas and originality of approach. Exceptionally deep critical understanding
of the issues. Synthesizes and makes expert use of wide-ranging relevant material.
Thought-provoking and challenging.
80
Incisive elucidation of theory or models. Highly organised evidence-based arguments. Evidence of original thinking or insight based on an evaluation of the evidence. Critical synthesis of a particularly wide body of evidence. Penetrating
analysis of existing ideas, supporting perceptive conclusions.
70
A wide range of literature used diligently to support all aspects of the work. A clear
awareness and understanding of up-to-date material. Well-balanced and complete
answer to the specified question. Analytically strong, well-focused. Arguments are
clear and insightful. No significant errors of fact or misunderstandings of concepts.
Lucid, orderly, convincing and interesting to read. Well-founded well-reasoned
conclusions.
65
Clear signs of well-directed effort, and in particular evidence of deeper engagement with literature. Good breadth of knowledge demonstrated. Points of
discussion are well-supported. High degree of clarity of explanation. Cautious and
accurate interpretation of relevant material. Presentation is careful with few
linguistic errors. Minor gaps in background material and/or literature cited. Minor
deviation in focus.
60
Sound, well-presented and clearly structured. Addresses all aspects of the
specified question directly. Clear understanding of subject material and relevant
theoretical frameworks. Significant body of literature is well represented and
referenced. Arguments are sustained and presented within a logical framework.
Discussion is solid and well-supported by the literature. Conclusions are generally
well focused, showing good level of engagement with the material. Occasional
gaps in background material and/or literature cited. Not all sections are wellfocused on the question. Discussions/conclusions contain small degree of ambiguity.
55
Reasonably well-focused on the specified question. Demonstrates a reasonably
good understanding of the topic area. A broad body of relevant literature is adequately used. Some well-argued points/perspectives, with some balanced discussion. Attempts are made to link discussions to the literature. The analysis of the
literature is lacking in depth. Some arguments are individually incomplete or rather
pedestrian. Not all aspects of the specified question are adequately addressed.
Some signs of confusion and/or small factual errors. Occasional sections may be
badly written, or might not support the main argument.
50
Answer demonstrates engagement with a reasonable range of source material.
Successfully uses some aspects of the material in constructing competent arguments. Contains at least some structured discussion. Attempts at directly linking
conclusions to the question are made. A well-constructed essay, but fails to
address the specified question. Narrow in scope. Treatment of the topic is rather
superficial or unfocused in places. Too high a degree of description, without
adequate analysis and interpretation. Arguments lack adequate depth or support.
Occasional errors of fact, which do not invalidate the main arguments. Several
sections are poorly written.
FAIL
MSc PASS
MSc PASS
MSc PASS
DISTINCTION
CLASS OR
GRADE
40
Achieves a very limited understanding of the topic area. Demonstrates some basic
knowledge/understanding of background material. Simple analytical discussion is
present. Conclusions are attempted. Fails to directly address the topic. Multiple
inaccuracies in language. No evidence of significant engagement with literature.
Significant errors of interpretation. Generally poorly written. Ineffective
information gathering. Lacking in substantial analysis.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|5
FAIL
30
FAIL
20
0
Addresses research question in a highly rudimentary manner but coherent manner. Demonstrates some minimal effort in gathering data. Shows only minimal
evidence of having understood the topic. Contains some superficially relevant
information. Includes some sense of a coherent structure Information presented
only in reduced (e.g. note) form, or unfinished. Very limited evidence of
structured/ focused research Information conveyed is largely irrelevant and
superficial. Very little connection to the research topic literature.
Addresses research question in a highly rudimentary manner but coherent manner. Demonstrates some minimal effort in gathering data. Shows only minimal
evidence of having understood the topic.
Provides adequate analysis to avoid outright failure. Contains some superficially
relevant information. Includes some sense of a coherent structure. Information
presented only in reduced (e.g. note) form, or unfinished. Very limited evidence of
structured/focused research Information conveyed is largely irrelevant and
superficial. Very little connection to the research topic literature.
Fails to address the specified research topic. Provides virtually no evidence of
original research. A very short piece of work, demonstrating little commitment.
Very little understanding of basic topic demonstrated. No clear logically structured
argument. Poorly-written, containing many mistakes. Lacking the required
structure. No attempt made to link information directly to the question.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|6
MICHAELMAS TERM
Animal Controversies
Elective Leader: Dr Beth Greenhough
Elective Rationale
Human and animal lives are fundamentally intertwined and human understandings of, treatment of and
dependencies upon non-human animals are often a source of environmental controversy and conflict. There
are many different kinds of animals, and many different forms such controversies take. Drawing on theories
and ideas from social studies of science and nature, this elective asks how can we better understand,
critically engage with and intervene in animal controversies to the benefit of both humans and animals?
Taking a geographical approach, the course explores four key sites of human-animal relations and the
controversies that arise within each. The seminars are designed to provide you with:
1. An overview of a number of key animal controversies in a range of contexts, including conservation,
farm animal welfare, the use of animals in scientific research and pest species;
2. an introduction to the ways in which social scientists have studied these controversies as a resource
for developing a critical perspective on human-animal relations; and
3. an appreciation of importance of context in shaping how animal controversies arise and the diverse
forms they take.
Teaching Approach
This elective consists of four 90-minute seminars, based around key readings, each of which explores a
different site of human-animal controversy.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
Conservation and animals in the wild
This seminar will explore how human understandings and aesthetics of nature and wilderness shape
conservation practices and the treatment of diverse species in conservation settings.
Key Readings
Buller, H.J. (2008) ‘Safe from the wolf: biosecurity, biodiversity and competing philosophies of nature’,
in Environment and Planning A, 40(7): 1583-1597.
Hinchliffe, S. and Whatmore, S. (2006) ‘Living Cities: Towards a Politics of Convivality’, in Science As
Culture 15(2): 123-138.
Lorimer, J. (2006) ‘What about the nematodes? Taxonomic partialities in the scope of UK biodiversity
conservation’, in Social & Cultural Geography, 7(4): 539-558.
Farm animals
This seminar will focus on farm animals, drawing on contemporary debates about the
commercialisation and industrialisation of farming practices, farm animal welfare and biosecurity.
Key Readings
Hinchliffe, S., Allen, J., Lavau, S., Bingham, N. and Carter, S. (2013) ‘Biosecurity and the topologies of
infected life: from borderlines to borderlands’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
38(4): 531-543.
Holloway, L. (2007) ‘Subjecting cows to robots: farming technologies and the making of animal
subjects’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(6): 1041 – 1060.
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3
4
Miele, M. (2011) ‘The taste of happiness: free-range chicken’, in Environment and Planning A, 43(9):
2076-2090.
Laboratory animal welfare
Rather than revise established pro and anti-vivisection debates, the session will look at the response to
these debates seen in the development of Laboratory Animal Science and the guiding principles (3Rs)
for laboratory animal welfare, and focus on how animal welfare is practiced in the laboratory setting.
Key Readings
Davies, G. (2012) ‘Caring for the multiple and the multitude: assembling animal welfare and enabling
ethical critique’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30: 623-638.
Greenhough, B. and Roe, E. (2011) ‘Ethics, space, and somatic sensibilities: comparing relationships
between scientific researchers and their human and animal experimental subjects’, in Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(1): 47 – 66.
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press (Chapter 3, ‘Sharing Suffering’).
Pests
Perhaps more than any other animals those labels as pests provoke negative responses in humans.
This seminar explores when, where and how certain animals become pests and the tensions between
ethical demands for the humane treatment of other species and instinctive responses to the
inconveniences - and even threats - posed by pest species.
Key Readings
Clark, N. (2013) ‘Mobile life: biosecurity practices and insect globalization’, in Science as Culture, 22(1):
16-37.
Fudge, E. (2011) ‘Pest friends’, in Snæbjörnsdóttir , B. and Wilson , M. (eds.) Uncertainty in the city, The
Green Box, Berlin. Available here: http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/PestFriends.pdf
Ginn, F. (2014) ‘Sticky lives: slugs, detachment and more-than-human ethics in the garden’, in
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39: 532–544.
Introductory Readings
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press.
Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A. (2007) The Animals Reader, Berg.
Philo, C. and Wilbert, C. (2000) Animal spaces, Beastly Places, Routledge, London and New York.
Urbanik, J. (2012) Placing animals: An introduction to the geography of human-animal relations, Rowman
and Littlefield, Plymouth.
Teaching Staff
Dr Beth Greenhough is an Associate Professor of Human Geography and Fellow of Keble College, University
of Oxford. Her work draws on a combination of political-economic geography, cultural geography and
science studies to explore the social implications of scientific innovations in the areas of health, biomedicine
and the environment. Employing a range of qualitative, ethnographic and archival methods, Beth seeks to
understand the social, cultural and ethical processes through which humans and animals are made available
as experimental subjects for biomedical research. She also contributes to the development of new
theoretical and methodological approaches within Geography better able to capture the material and
affective dimensions of human-environment relations and how these are being reconfigured through
biotechnological innovation. She is co-editor of Bodies Across Borders: The Global Circulation of Body Parts,
Medical Tourists and Professionals (Ashgate 2015) and she has published widely in many of the leading
Geography and interdisciplinary journals. You can read more about her work here:
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/bgreenhough.html
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|8
ASEAN Environments
Elective Leaders: Dr Paul Jepson and Dr Mari Mulyani
Elective Rationale
The formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 and the European Union (in
November 1993) is constitutive of a move to a world order where regional groupings of countries form a
‘second’ level of government located between international institutions and the nation state. Looking ahead
it is expected that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) may result in deeper
integration within Latin America and a third major supra-national political unit. This elective explores the
implications of this trend for international environmental governance. Specifically it examines the complex
interplay between the principles of ASEAN cooperation, politics, society and natural resources, and the
governance of environmental issues of regional and international concern.
ASEAN comprises the nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand Brunei, Vietnam,
Laos PDR, Myanmar and Cambodia. The ASEAN region is rich in natural resources. Together these 10
countries support 10% of the world's remaining forests, 60% of global tropical peatland (vital for carbon
management), and represent the world's top 20 fishing economy and some of the most diverse terrestrial
and marine ecosystems in the world. ASEAN is also World’s seventh largest economic power (GDP US$2.4
trillion in 2013) with a rapidly growing population predicted to reach 650 Million by 2020 of which 450
million are 'forest-dependent’ and ‘indigenous’ peoples. ASEAN’s environment and economic potential is
challenged by persistent environmental degradation and complex politics. For these reasons ASEAN
countries have long been a focus for international environmental policy and, as governments become more
tolerant to academic analysis, the region is becoming a focus for progressive research on approaches to
environmental governance.
ASEAN countries exhibit great cultural diversity, and politics amongst member countries varies from liberal
democracy to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Four countries - Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar and
Thailand - have experienced major political and institutional reforms in the last 30 years. This course
explores the political dynamics amongst policy actors and the underlying political economy that governs the
region's environment and natural resources. It asks: what is the future for the environment in a region
whose countries strive to become 'developed' and are undergoing rapid structural, political and economic
change? It also examines the relationship between the path-dependence of the countries' political economy
and environmental decline, and its impact on the well-being of local people.
Teaching Approach
The elective leaders have long histories of engagement in these issues with a particular focus on Indonesia.
The elective draws on and profiles academic research produced in the region by ASEAN and international
scholars. The course will run for six weeks. Each class will run for ninety minutes and include a lecture, a
presentation (10 minutes) by one or more students, followed by discussion. We expect that all students will
read the core text each week, and that those presenting will read more widely. Case studies will be used to
relate theory and practice. As you read on you will see that each class covers a large topic though obviously
there is a limit to the detail and depth we can go into. The goal of this elective is to introduce conceptual
frameworks and case study evidence that will enable you to ‘gain traction’ on the governance dynamics at
play for further study and contemplation.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|9
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
Introduction to ASEAN
This class will introduce and discuss the rationale behind ASEAN’s creation, followed by examination of
the key environmental issues in the region. Drawing on the concept of 'institutional interplay' within
institutional theory, we will examine the heterogeneity of governance systems, the variation of political
economic interests in member countries, and their impact on the environment and natural resources.
The class will deepen your understanding of the interplay between environmental institutions
established at the international and regional levels and those within ASEAN as a supra-national grouping.
Specifically, how does ASEAN’s founding principle of “non-interference” in each other’s affairs effect
environmental governance as a transnational issue?
Key Readings
Hill, H. (2013) ‘The Political Economy of Policy Reform: Insights from Southeast Asia’, in Asian
Development Review, 30(1): 108-130.
Koh, K.L. (2002) ‘Regional Environment Governance: Examining the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) Model’, in Esty, D.C. and Ivanova, M.H. (eds.), Global Environmental Governance, Yale,
USA.
Supplementary Readings
Koh, K-L. (2007) ‘Asian Environmental Protection in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development:
Convergence Versus Divergence?’, in Macquarie Journal of International and Comparative Environmental
Law 3; 4(1), 43-70.
Liss, C. (2013) ‘New Actors and the State: Addressing Maritime Security Threats in Southeast Asia’,
in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 35(2): 141-162.
McDowell, M.A. (1989) ‘Development and the Environment in ASEAN’, in Pacific Affairs: 307-329.
Williams, M.J. (2013) ‘Will New Multilateral Arrangements Help Southeast Asian States Solve Illegal
Fishing?’, in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 35(2): 258283.
Transboundary Haze Pollution; the failure of ‘environmental regionalism’?
Smoke haze from forest fires is a major regional, socio-economic, and environmental problem in
Southeast Asia. This pollution has endangered human health and harmed living resources and
ecosystems. In 2002 ASEAN created an ‘Agreement for Transboundary Haze Pollution’ but this was
unable to prevent further haze events that occurred between 2004 and 2010, and more recently in 2014.
Historical institutionalism perspectives assume that individuals’ behaviour is based not only on a rational
calculation (utilitarian) but also on the logic of appropriateness. Taking this as our point of departure we
will explore the nature of ‘environmental regionalism' and the key barriers affecting ASEAN’s ability to
mobilise national institutions to govern haze pollution as a transboundary issue. We will discuss whether
the ideal of supra-national environmental governance can be achieved in a geopolitical setting where
‘nationalism and sovereignty’ occupy centre stage in in the principles of regional cooperation.
Key Readings
Cotton, J. (1999) ‘The “haze" over Southeast Asia: Challenging the ASEAN mode of regional engagement’,
in Pacific Affairs: 331-351.
Elliott, L. (2012) ‘ASEAN and environmental governance: strategies of regionalism in Southeast Asia’, in
Global Environmental Politics, 12(3): 38-57.
Supplementary Readings
Nguitragool, P. (2011) 'Negotiating the Haze Treaty', in Asian Survey, 51(2): 356-378.
Tacconi, L., Jotzo, F. and Quentin Grafton, R. (2008) ‘Local Causes, Regional Co-operation, and Global
Financing for Environmental Problems: The Case of Southeast Asian Haze Pollution’, in International
Environmental Agreement, 8(1): 1–16.
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4
‘Clientelism’ and forest governance
This class will introduce and discuss 'Clientelism' as a form of social order. ‘Clientelist’ institutions are
deeply-embedded and widely-practiced in ASEAN, and interact with member countries’ formal
government institutions. Drawing on the case of ‘wild logging’ in Indonesia you will be introduced to the
bureaucratic practices of ‘rent-seeking’ and ‘cronyism’, and to the players and their interests in logging
networks, involving government officials, community leaders and 'local entrepreneurs’. Such networks
are the ‘grounded reality of deforestation – considered the fundamental environmental problem facing
Southeast Asia – and represent a huge challenge for conventional forest governance approaches.
Developing the knowledge-base to exploring creative, or grounded, governance solutions is the goal of
this session.
Key Readings
Jepson, P., Jarvie, J.K., MacKinnon, K. and Monk, K.A. (2001) ‘The end for Indonesia's lowland forests?’, in
Science, 292(5518): 859-861.
Jepson, P.R. (2015) Saving a species threatened by trade: a network study of Bali starling Leucopsar
rothschildiconservation, Oryx.
McCarthy, J.F. (2002) ‘Power and interest on Sumatra's rainforest frontier: Clientelist coalitions, illegal
logging and conservation in the Alas Valley’, in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 33(1): 77-106.
Supplementary Readings
Le Billon, P. (2000) ‘The political ecology of transition in Cambodia 1989–1999: war, peace and forest
exploitation’, in Development and Change, 31(4): 785-805.
Mulyani, M. and Jepson, P. (2013) ‘REDD+ and Forest Governance in Indonesia A Multi-stakeholder Study
of Perceived Challenges and Opportunities’, in The Journal of Environment & Development, 22(3): 261283.
Scott, J.C. (1972) ‘Patron-client politics and political change in Southeast Asia’, in American Political
Science Review, 66(01): 91-113.
Sidel, J. T. (2004) ‘Bossism and democracy in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia: towards an
alternative framework for the study of “local strongmen”’, in Politicising democracy: The new local
politics of democratisation: 51-74.
Woods, K. (2011) ‘Ceasefire capitalism: military–private partnerships, resource concessions and military–
state building in the Burma–China borderlands’, in Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(4): 747-770.
Transnational environmental crime and the response of transnational networks
The ‘policy network’ literature posits that government should no longer be considered a unitary,
hierarchically-organised entity but rather a lead actor in networks involving multiple state and non-state
organisations and markets. This perspective is particularly relevant with increasing regional and global
problems such as transboundary haze pollution, climate change and transnational environmental crime.
This class will discuss transnational environmental crime, including activities such as illegal logging,
timber smuggling, wildlife smuggling and the dumping of hazardous waste and chemicals. In addition,
the recent issue that has captured huge attention from the media and scholars is 'cross-border illegal
fishing' and the related maritime security issue. We will assess the roles of transnational networks that
contribute to processes for establishing the norms and rules within environmental institutions
(e.g., Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement
Network, Regional Plan of Action to Promote Responsible Fishing Practices (RPOA) and ASEAN
Declaration on Environmental Crime) and how these institutions respond to the relevant crimes. Is this
transnational crime adequately scrutinised? What are the barriers to solving persistent problems? If not,
what needs to happen?
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|11
Key Readings
Elliott, L. (2007) ‘Transnational environmental crime in the Asia Pacific: an ‘un (der) securitized’ security
problem?’, in The Pacific Review, 20(4): 499-522.
Emmers, R. (2003) ‘ASEAN and the securitization of transnational crime in Southeast Asia’, in The Pacific
Review, 16(3): 419-438.
Williams, M.J. (2013) ‘Will New Multilateral Arrangements Help Southeast Asian States Solve Illegal
Fishing?’, in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 35(2): 258283.
Supplementary Readings
Liss, C. (2013) ‘New Actors and the State: Addressing Maritime Security Threats in Southeast Asia’,
in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 35(2): 141-162.
Elliott, L. (2011) ‘ASEAN and environmental governance: rethinking networked regionalism in Southeast
Asia’, in Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 14: 61-64.
Nijman, V. (2010) ‘An overview of international wildlife trade from Southeast Asia’, in Biodiversity and
conservation, 19(4): 1101-1114.
Shepherd, C.R., and Nijman, V. (2008) ‘The trade in bear parts from Myanmar: an illustration of the
ineffectiveness of enforcement of international wildlife trade regulations’, in Biodiversity and
Conservation, 17(1): 35-42.
Obidzinski, K., Andrianto, A., & Wijaya, C. (2007). Cross-border timber trade in Indonesia: critical or
overstated problem? Forest governance lessons from Kalimantan. International Forestry Review, 9(1):
526-535.
Ray, A. (2008). Waste management in developing Asia: can trade and cooperation help?. The Journal of
Environment & Development.
Lebel, L., Contreras, A., Pasong, S., & Garden, P. (2004) Nobody knows best: alternative perspectives on
forest management and governance in Southeast Asia. International Environmental Agreements, 4(2):
111-127.
5
Path dependence of national resource management: land control, land grab and social unrest
Informed by the lens of the political economy, we will discuss the role of natural resources in the
economic and social development of some ASEAN members. Moreover, the 'path dependence'
perspective posits that institutions are persistent, particularly when powerful actors collude over ideas,
core beliefs and economic interests. In this class we will consider the case of ‘land grabs’ to examine the
relationship between a country's political economy, environmental decline and the impact on the wellbeing of rural people. Natural resources, in particular forest conversion, have been used as a means to
stabilise political and economic power at the expense of marginalising people and the environment.
Agricultural ‘land grabs’ associated with the ‘crop commodity boom’ started in the early 1990s
(associated with cocoa, coffee, timber plantations and notably oil palm), led to the transformation of
landscapes and associated conflicts over land, ethnic tension and social unrest. This class will unpack the
‘land grab’ label to reveal the dynamics of the interplay between states, transnational corporations,
domestic investors and smallholders that underlies agricultural expansion.
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Key Readings
Hall, D. (2011) ‘Land grabs, land control, and Southeast Asian crop booms’, in Journal of Peasant
Studies, 38(4): 837–57.
McCarthy, J., Vel, J. and Afiff, S. (2012) 'Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: Development
schemes, virtual land grabs, and green acquisitions in Indonesia's Outer Islands', in The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 39(2): 521-549.
Supplementary Readings
Li, T.M. (2002) ‘Engaging simplifications: community-based resource management, market processes
and state agendas in upland Southeast Asia’, in World development, 30(2): 265-283.
Peluso, N.L. and Lund, C. (2011) ‘New frontiers of land control: Introduction’, in Journal of Peasant
Studies, 38(4): 667-681.
Zoomers, A. (2010) ‘Globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the
current global land grab’, in The Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(2): 429-447.
6
‘Participation’ and ‘social learning’, how do local communities adapt and respond to environmental
change?
In this last session we will engage with concepts of 'participation' (a norm within ‘good governance
principles’) and 'social learning' in the management of natural resources in certain ASEAN countries. We
will explore how 'social learning' plays an important role for both maintaining stability and changing
environmental institutions, and how this collective learning is essential for developing the capacity of
local communities to negotiate rules, norms and interests with outsiders. The case studies centre around
the opportunity and constraints of social learning within certain development and conservation projects
implemented in Southeast Asia. This is particularly relevant given that this region has become the focus
of transnational networks seeking to implement governance reform through development and
conservation projects.
Key Readings
Lebel, L., Grothmann, T. and Siebenhüner, B. (2010) ‘The role of social learning in adaptiveness: insights
from water management’, in International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics,
10(4): 333-353.
Mulyani, M. and Jepson, P. (2015) ‘Social learning through a REDD+ ‘village agreement’: Insights from the
KFCP in Indonesia’, in Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 56(1): 79-95.
Supplementary Readings
Marschke, M. and Sinclair, A.J. (2009) ‘Learning for sustainability: Participatory resource management in
Cambodian fishing villages’, in Journal of environmental management, 90(1), 206-216.
Van Ittersum, M.K., Roetter, R.P., Van Keulen, H., De Ridder, N., Hoanh, C.T., Laborte, A.G., and Tawang,
A. (2004) ‘A systems network (SysNet) approach for interactively evaluating strategic land use options at
sub-national scale in South and South-east Asia’, in Land Use Policy, 21(2): 101-113.
Teaching Staff
Dr Paul Jepson is course director of the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. He previously
directed the MSc in Nature Society and Environmental Policy (2007-2013) and prior to these appointments,
he held Senior Research Fellowships with the Environmental Change Institute and the Skoll Centre for Social
Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School. Paul transferred into academia from a successful career in
conservation management and policy. He has consulted for a wide range of inter-governmental and nongovernmental organisations and was Indonesia Programme Coordinator for BirdLife International (19911997). He started his career as a local government countryside officer developing new urban conservation
initiatives in Manchester and Shrewsbury (UK). His research interests focus on the geographies of
conservation governance with particular reference to long term interests in protected areas, wildlife trade,
conservation history, attitudes, values and practices, media representations of conservation issues, and the
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|13
role, accountability and legitimacy of conservation NGOs. Paul is actively integrating the opportunities
offered by new technologies and media into his teaching and research.
Dr Mari Mulyani received her DPhil from the School of Geography and the Environment, University of
Oxford. She holds a BA (International Relations) from Gadjah Mada University and an M.Phil (Environmental
Science) from the University of Indonesia. She has a long history of engagement with issues related to
environmental management, particularly with the political dynamic amongst policy actors, and the
underlying political economy governing the environment and natural resources in Indonesia and ASEAN. Her
research focuses on the interplay between environmental institutions developed at the international and
regional levels and those at the national and sub-national levels, including informal institutions deeply
embedded within local communities and indigenous people. Mari is a member of the Oxford Conservation
Governance Lab and Forest Governance Group, and is a lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s Post
Graduate Study of Environmental Science.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|14
Corporate Social and Environmental Accountability
Elective Leader: Professor Gordon L. Clark
Elective Rationale
In this reading course, we consider the relationship between corporate responsibility and the role of
financial markets in driving long-term environmental decision-making. This provides us a way of
understanding globalisation, corporate social and environmental standards, and the role of institutional
investors in the global economy.
Given the significance of institutional investors in global financial markets, many environmental and social
activists have argued that these investors should take more seriously their responsibilities in prompting
corporations to respond to growing environmental expectations. In this respect we look at the role of
responsible investment strategies and the possible impact of the financial services industry in fostering
higher standards of corporate environmental and social practice (locally and globally). This issue is very
contentious; many politicians are wary of the 'power' of institutional investors. Moreover, there are legal
constraints on institutional investors when responding to calls for socially responsible or sustainable
investment. This course looks critically at these developments while assessing the role that institutional
investors may play in promoting global environmental and social standards.
Teaching Approach
This reading course is led by Professor Gordon L. Clark with a postgraduate teaching assistant. The reading
course is available to MSc, MPhil and DPhil students and is assessed by a 4,000 word option essay subject to
approval by the course instructor. Students from outside of the School can arrange for other forms of
assessment including examination.
We begin with the issue of corporate responsibility – who owns the firm, what it does, and what should it do
in theory and in practice. This leads on to brand management in consumer markets, focusing upon the
nature of corporate "image" and "reputation" in a world of multiple interpretations of meaning. It is argued
that brand management is an essential ingredient in corporate strategy, affecting corporate revenue and
ultimately stock market prices. This is especially important for firms that offer "premium" products in the
global marketplace; these firms often carry little in the way of liabilities in a conventional sense (plant and
equipment) but are very vulnerable to issues such as how cultural icons and celebrities are perceived on a
local and global basis. Inevitably, their dependence on reputation makes such corporations vulnerable to all
kinds of stakeholders and shareholders and their interests in global standards.
Finally, students might also examine the role of financial markets in driving environmental transformation
through the use of long-term investing. In theory, market pricing should facilitate the reallocation of capital
along a low carbon trajectory. Provided in this package are readings on responsible investment and a Towers
Watson-led project aimed at long-term sustainable investment.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
No Class
Brief organization meeting
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|15
3
4
5
Corporate Social Responsibility
In this presentation, we look at the definition of corporate social responsibility and the
contrast that can be drawn between Anglo-American expectations and those found in
continental Europe. To set the scene we note the significance attached to the corporation
as a "fictive person" in English common law-responsible and accountable for its own
actions as an entity (going beyond the responsibilities of individual managers and
corporate executives). By contrast, much of continental Europe treats the firm as a social
institution (an instrument of the state) with concomitant higher expectations regarding its
social responsibilities. To make our case, we go back to two historically important legal
cases.
Case Studies
Dodge et al. v Ford Motor Co. (1919) 170 NW 668, 204 Mich 459.
Hutton v West Cork Railway Co. (1883) LR 23 Ch. D 654.
Key Readings
Handy, C. (2002) ‘What's a business for?’, in Harvard Business Review, 80(12), 49-55.
Porter, M. and Kramer, M. (2006) ‘Strategy and society: the link between competitive
advantage and corporate social responsibility’, in Harvard Business Review.
Stout, L. (2008) ‘Why we should stop teaching’, in Dodge v Ford, Virginia Law & Business
Review 3, 163-176.
Brand Identity and Image
In this presentation, we look at corporate reputation and its sensitivity to challenges from
activists and the NGO community regarding corporate social and environmental
performance. For firms that have strong brand names, whose products (and revenue) are a
function of image and style, and who rely upon production systems strung across the
globe, brand image and identity are crucial intangible assets. While brand image is
important for many consumer-products firms, reputation is vital for the financial sector.
This argument is developed referencing the relevant literature on reputation management
and the intersection between product markets and financial markets. To illustrate, we use
a recent case involving a couple of UK community activists who ran a long-term campaign
against McDonald's and lost in UK court until the European Court of Human Rights
intervened to protect them from the multinational.
Case Study
Lewis, P and Evans, R. (2013) ‘McLibel leaflet was co-written by police spy’, in The
Guardian, Saturday 22 June 2013, p 4.
Steel and Morris v. The United Kingdom (2005) 68416/01 ECHR 103 (15 February 2005).
Key Readings
Bansal, P. and Clelland, I. (2004) ‘Talking trash: legitimacy, impression management, and
unsystematic risk in the context of the natural environment’, in Academy of Management
Journal, 47, 93-103.
Clark, G.L. and Hebb, T. (2005) ‘Why should they care? Corporate responsibility and global
standards’, in Environment and Planning A, 37(11), 2015-2031.
Lev, B. (2004) ‘Sharpening the intangibles edge’, in Harvard Business Review, 82(6), 109116.
Global Standards
This week we examine the implications for brand identity in a global economy with
integrating environmental regimes. We consider the case of Sarei v. Rio Tinto which
involves the use of the Alien Torts Statute to claim damages in U.S. courts for
environmental harms at the Papua New Guinea site of a British-Australian multinational
metals and mining corporation. The case taps into key debates of the legal literature
including the status of environmental harms under international human rights law, and
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|16
legitimate jurisdictions for environmental liabilities of multi-national corporations.
6
7
Case Study
Sarei v. Rio Tinto PLC case (United States District Court, C.D. California, July 9, 2002)
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15214819111675671972&q=Sarei+v.+Rio+T
into+PLC&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5&as_ylo=2008
Key Readings
Holt, D.B., Quelch, J. and Taylor, E.L. (2004) ‘How global brands compete’, in Harvard
Business Review, 82(9), 68-75.
Hughes, A., McEwan, C. and Bek, D. (2013) ‘Retailers, supply networks and changing
articulations of ethicality: lessons from Flower Valley in South Africa’, in Journal of
Economic Geography, 13(2), 211-30.
Rakotomavo, M.T.J. (2011) ‘Preferences of retail investors and institutions for corporate
social performance’, in Journal of Sustainable Investment and Finance, 1(2), 93-102.
Institutional Investors as ‘Universal Owners’
This week we look at institutional investor-driven campaigns of corporate social
responsibility. Institutional investors (including pension funds, mutual funds, insurers and
sovereign wealth funds) have a role in funding economic activity, as well as a variety of
important social functions: for example, pension funds manage retirement benefits for
future retirees; sovereign wealth funds finance states' various policy objectives.
Institutional investment is constrained both by the state and the market, and is obviously
affected by the performance of investee companies. The issue of ‘responsibility’ is shown
to have two sides: what companies do and what investors do!
Case Study
Principles for Responsible Investment, An Initiative of UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN
Global Compact, London.
Key Readings
Clark, G.L., Salo, J. and Hebb, T. (2008) ‘Social and environmental shareholder activism in
the public spotlight: US corporate annual meetings, campaign strategies, and
environmental performance, 2001-04’, in Environment and Planning A, 40, 1370-1390.
Hawley, J. and Williams, A.T. (2007) ‘Universal owners: challenges and opportunities’, in
Corporate Governance: An International Review, 15(3), 415-20.
Richardson, B. (2009) ‘Keeping ethical investment ethical: regulatory issues for investing
for sustainability’, in Journal of Business Ethics, 87, 555-527
Disinvestment Campaigns
Should we rely upon financial markets and intermediaries to ‘price’ unacceptable
corporate behaviour? Given the evidence that there is hardly ever a long-term penalty
imposed on corporate executives for violating social norms and conventions, how are we
to give ‘voice’ to our unease about the slowness of change? One response has been to
take a leaf out of activists that encourage boycotts, disinvestment, and naming and
shaming. Here, we look at the disinvestment campaign aimed at fossil fuels relying upon
research from Oxford’s SSEE stranded assets program.
Case Study
Ansar, A., Caldecott, B.L. and Tilbury, J. (2013) Stranded assets and the fossil fuel
divestment campaign: what does divestment mean for the valuation of fossil fuel assets?
Working Paper, Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford.
Key Readings
Clark, G.L. and Monk, A.H.B. (2010) ‘The legitimacy and governance of Norway’s sovereign
wealth fund: the ethics of global investment’, in Environment and Planning A, 42, 1723-38.
The National (2013) Did the Catholic Church endorse fossil-fuel divestment?. Available at:
http://www.thenation.com/article/did-the-catholic-church-endorse-fossil-fueldivestment/
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Klein,
N.
(2009)
Enough.
It’s
time
for
a
boycott.
Available
at:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/naomi-klein-boycott-israel
Westermann-Bahaylo, M. (2009) ‘Institutionalizing peace through commerce: engagement
or divestment in South African and Sudan’, in Journal of Business Ethics, 89(4), 417-434.
8
Long-term Investment
Do investors invest for the long-term? What are the conditions for long-term investing?
Here, we take students into the world of fiduciary duty, conceptualising the nature and
scope of investing, and the latest thinking in actually making real such an agenda. We
reference the Principles of Responsible Investing again but extend this agenda to
'sustainable' investing and the recent attempts to conceptualise the nature of long-term
investing relevant to the environment and climate change.
Case Study
Project Telos - Addressing the challenges of transformation through sustainable investing.
We need a Bigger Boat.
Key readings
Bauer, R., Clark, G.L and Viehs, M. (2013) The geography of shareholder engagement:
evidence from a large British institutional investor. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2261649 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2261649
Clark, G.L. (2013) ‘The Kay Review on long-horizon investing: A Guide for the Perplexed’, in
Rotman International Journal of Pension Management, 6(1), 58-63.
Clark, G.L. and Viehs, M. (2014) The Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility for
Investors: An Overview and Evaluation of the Existing CSR Literature Working Paper, Smith
School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.
Introductory Readings
European Commission (2013) Disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large
companies and groups (proposal to amend Accounting Directives) – Frequently asked questions:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-336_en.htm?locale=FR
Clark, G.L. and Monk, A.H.B. (2010) ‘The legitimacy and governance of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund: the
ethics of global investment’, in Environment and Planning A, 42: 1723-38.
Ohlins, W. (1995) The New Guide to Identity: How to Create and Sustain Change through Managing Identity,
Gower, Aldershot, Introduction, Sections 1 and 2, SAID x12, BOD [SoG].
The reading material (see website and relevant weblearn) provided for each week make two kinds of
connections: between corporate responsibility and brand reputation in a global context, and between
corporate responsibility and the valuation of the firm made by financial analysts and institutions. This is the
story we tell in the course.
Introductory Viewing
Before the course begins, students are asked to watch the movie: The Corporation.
"The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage
from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our
lives. Taking its legal status as a 'person' to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the
psychiatrist's couch to ask 'What kind of person is it?' Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The
Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam
Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.
Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE
AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. The film is based on
the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan."
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(Source: http://www.thecorporation.com)
Teaching Staff
Professor Gordon L. Clark DSc (Oxon) FBA is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the
Environment. An economic geographer, he is interested in the responsibilities and behaviour of investors as
regards long-term sustainable investment. This has involved research on institutions' proxy-voting
behaviour, the strategies of corporate engagement given concerns about environmental liabilities and the
sensitivity of firms to brand image and reputation, the regulation of corporate disclosure on issues related to
environment and social responsibility, and the governance of investment institutions that have an explicit
long-term mandate. His current research focuses upon the governance of investment decision-making in the
context of market volatility and long-term obligations. In part, this project has developed in collaboration
with Oxford colleagues and graduate students as well as the UNPRI, Mercer, the Telos Project, Towers
Watson, and the project led by Professor Tessa Hebb at Carleton University (Ottawa) funded by the Social
Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Related research is focused on the design and management of investment institutions including reference to
insourcing, out-sourcing, and off-shoring activities and the demand and supply of financial services relevant
to pension funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds. Papers on this topic have been published in
the Journal of Economic Geography (2013), Environment and Planning A (2014), and Place, Territory and
Governance (2014). With Adam Dixon and Ashby Monk, his monograph on the governance and legitimacy of
sovereign wealth funds was published by Princeton University Press in 2013.
His research on household financial decision-making has focused on long-term saving utilising theories and
methods from the behavioural and social sciences in the context of risk and uncertainty. Papers on this topic
have been published in the Transactions IBG (2007), Ageing and Society (2008), Environment and Planning
A (2009), Pensions: An International Journal (2009), the Journal of Economic Geography (2010) and Urban
Studies (2011) supported, in part, by the ESRC, Mercer and Towers Wyatt. With Kendra Strauss and Janelle
Knox-Hayes, he is co-author of Saving for Retirement (OUP, 2012). Recent related books include the coedited Managing Financial Risks: From the Global to the Local (OUP 2009) (with Ashby Monk and Adam
Dixon),
and The
Geography
of
Finance (OUP
2007)
(with
Dariusz
Wójcik).
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|19
Energy and the Environment
Elective Leaders: Dr Christian N. Jardine and Dr Sarah Darby
Elective Rationale
Fossil fuel burning for provision of energy services is the major contributor to climate change, yet our
demand for ever-higher levels of consumption to support increasingly affluent lifestyles shows no sign of
abating. This option explores issues of energy use and supply, and examines economic instruments and
policies for achieving a lower carbon future.
The ECM course does have some dedicated core lectures on energy, which this course is designed to
complement with minimal overlap. The other Masters courses do not have any dedicated energy teaching,
and so this course serves as a useful introduction to a major environmental topic.
Teaching Approach
The tutorials run as four 2-hour modules and explore energy issues by examining different aspects of a sociotechnical energy system: energy demand (personal consumption in context); energy supply (where fuel and
electricity come from, and associated geopolitical and climate change issues); energy economics and equity
issues; and energy policy.
Tutorials will explain broad underlying concepts that are transferrable to international locations, but the
majority of case studies are drawn from the UK. Students are encouraged to contribute examples from their
own backgrounds, and these international comparisons often form the basis of group discussion.
An essay is set on each of the four topics above in advance of the tutorial, where the marked essays will be
discussed. Students must also complete an assessed essay as part of the course on a subject of their choice.
Assessed essay titles are chosen in discussion with the course tutors.
Elective Outline
Lecture Description
1
Energy Demand
Energy concepts and footprinting methodology. How we use energy as individuals. Infrastructures
of demand, and what ‘behaviour change’ and ‘low carbon transitions’ might mean in practical and
theoretical terms. How macro-levels of energy demand are the sum of many individual microdemands, practices and decisions.
2
Energy Supply
The geopolitics of energy, especially the price of primary fuels. The issue of peak oil. Fossil fuel
reserves and their climate implications.
3
Energy Economics
Carbon trading schemes and carbon taxes. The economics of energy use, and equity
considerations.
4
Energy Policy
What policies can governments implement to alter the way we view and use energy? What are
the relative merits of energy taxation, regulation, voluntary agreements and market
transformation?
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|20
Introductory Readings
Here is a mix of books and papers that serve as a good introduction to the topics we will be discussing. We
don’t expect you to read it all. Part of the skill we are trying to teach is for you to find and evaluate available
material, so we also expect you to search out your own sources. The books are in the School of Geography
Library, with the possible exception of the book by David Elliott.
General
Lovins, A. (1976) ‘Energy Strategy: the road not taken’, in Foreign Affairs. http://www.rmi.org/KnowledgeCenter/Library/E77-01_EnergyStrategyRoadNotTaken
McKay, D.J.C. (2009) Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, UIT and online at:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
Demand for energy services, energy-using practices
Darby, S. (2007) ‘Enough is as good as a feast – sufficiency as policy’, in Proceedings of the Summer Study,
European Council for an Energy-efficient Economy, paper 1,255.
Goodall, C. (2010) How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, Earthscan.
Gram-Hanssen, K. (2013) ‘Efficient technologies or user behaviour, which is the more important when
reducing households’ energy consumption?’, in Energy Efficiency, 6:447–457.
Perez-Lombard, L., Ortiz, J. and Pout, C. (2008) ‘A review on buildings energy consumption information’, in
Energy and Buildings, 40, 394-398.
Sovacool, B. (2011) ‘Conceptualizing urban household energy use: Climbing the ‘‘Energy Services Ladder’’’, in
Energy Policy, 39, 1659-1668.
Wilhite, H. (2008) ‘New thinking on the agentive relationship between end-use technologies and energyusing practices’, in Energy Efficiency, 1(1), 121-130.
Supply
Elliott, D. (2013) ‘Renewables: a review of sustainable energy options’, in IoP Science, doi:10.1088/978-0750-31040-6: http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-750-31040-6
Leggett, J. (2013) The Energy of Nations. Risk Blindness and the Road to Renaissance, Taylor and Francis,
ISBN: 9780415857826.
Economics, equity
Boardman, B. (2010) Fixing Fuel Poverty, Earthscan.
Nussbaumer, P., Bazilian, M. and Modi, V. (2012) ‘Measuring energy poverty: focusing on what matters’, in
Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 16, 231-243.
Reiss, P.C. and White, M.W. (2008) ‘What changes energy consumption? Prices and public pressures’, in
RAND Journal of Economics, 39 (3), 636-663.
Sorrell, S. and Dimitropoulos, J. (2008) ‘The rebound effect: microeconomic definitions, limitations and
extensions’, in Ecological Economics, 65 (636-649).
Policy design and implementation
Janda, K.B. and Parag, Y. (2013) ‘A middle-out approach for improving energy performance in buildings’, in
Building Research and Information, 41(1): 39-50.
Mallaburn, P. and Eyre, N. (2013) ‘Lessons from energy efficiency policy and programmes in the UK from
1973 to 2013’, in Energy Efficiency 7, 23-41.
Mitchell, C. (2008) The Political Economy of Sustainable Energy, Palgrave McMillan.
Mendonca, M., Jacobs, D. and Sovacool, B. (2009) Powering the Green Economy: The feed-in tariff handbook,
Earthscan.
Patrick, J., Killip, G., Brand, C., Augustine, A. and Eyre, N. (2014) Oxfordshire’s low Carbon Economy:
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/olce/olce-report-oct2014.pdf
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Shove, E. and Walker, G. (2007) ‘CAUTION! Transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition
management’, in Environment and Planning A, 39, 763-770.
Electricity infrastructure, smart grids (some supplementary reading for those interested in grid
developments)
Darby, S.J. and McKenna, E. (2012) ‘Social implications of residential demand response in cool temperate
climates’, in Energy Policy, 49, 759-769.
Goulden, M., Bedwell, B., Rennnick-Egglestone, S., Rodden, T. and Spence, A. (2014) ‘Smart grids, smart
users? The role of the user in demand side management’, in Energy Research and Social Science, 2, 21-29.
Welsch, M., Bazilian, M., Howells, M., Divan, D., Elzinga, D., Strbac, G., Jones, L., Keane, A., Gielen, D.,
Balijepalli, V.S.K., Murthy, Brew-Hammond, A. and Yumkella, K. (2013) ‘Smart and Just Grids for sub-Saharan
Africa: Exploring options’, in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 20, 336-352.
Teaching Staff
Dr Christian Jardine is a Senior Researcher in the Environmental Change Institute with 11 years of research
experience of renewable energy technologies and policies. Christian's work has focused on small scale
renewables, especially the outdoor performance of solar photovoltaics, the integration of renewables into
the building stock and their impact on the electricity network. Christian’s work at ECI is now dedicated solely
to Masters’ teaching, with his remaining time working for a solar PV installation company.
Dr Sarah Darby is a Senior Researcher at the ECI, investigating the social, cultural and behavioural aspects of
energy use. Her interests are in energy systems as socio-technical systems – in particular, in the
development of ‘smart grids’ and infrastructures of demand – and in the development of energy literacy.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|22
Environmental Remote Sensing
Elective Leader: Dr Chris Doughty
Elective Rationale
In this elective we will learn how satellite data can be used as a tool to answer ecological questions. We will
start with the theory behind remote sensing but then quickly look at case studies on how to measure
logging, selective logging, forest degradation, fires, and forest carbon stocks either from space or aircraft.
We will learn about different types of remote sensing data such as MODIS, Landsat, Lidar, TRMM and
hyperspectral remote sensing. We will make field measurements using a spectrometer. It will be a mix of
lectures and practicals. The idea will be to teach how to use remote sensing in conjunction with other
environmental research techniques. Social science students interested in how land use change may affect
social phenomena are also encouraged.
Introductory Readings
Asner, G.P. et al. (2005) ‘Selective logging in the Brazilian Amazon’, in Science, 310:480-482.
Gibbs, H.K. et al. (2007) ‘Monitoring and estimating tropical forest carbon stocks: making REDD a reality’, in
Environmental Research Letters 2; doi:10.1088/1748-9326/2/4/0450023.
Lefsky, M. A., et al. 2002. Lidar remote sensing for ecosystem studies. BioScience 52:19-30.
Saatchi, S.S. et al. (2007) ‘Distribution of aboveground live biomass in the Amazon basin’, in Global Change
Biology, 13:816-837.
Teaching Staff
Chris Doughty is a Lecturer in Ecosystem Ecology in the Ecosystem Dynamics group within the Environmental
Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He majored in Environmental Science at University of California,
Berkeley and subsequently completed a PhD in Earth System Science at University of California, Irvine.
Before joining the ECI in July 2010, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Global
Ecology at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford. His main interest is understanding tropical forest carbon fluxes,
through remote sensing, eddy covariance, leaf gas exchange and intensive carbon cycle plots.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|23
Flood Risk Management: Water Security in theory and practice
Elective Leader: Professor Edmund Penning-Rowsell
Elective Rationale
Central to water management is the management of extremes. Floods are one such extreme. Science
contributes to this management by reducing uncertainty, but many issues remain:
• What are the alternative strategies for ‘tackling’ floods?
• What is meant by flood ‘defence’ and ‘flood risk management’?
• What is efficient risk reduction?
• What is the characteristic of public expectations?
• What social justice issues are raised, and which can be tackled?
• What flood risk reduction measures exacerbate environmental harm?
• What governance issues are raised by the need to manage flood risk?
Climate change appears to raise threat of greater flood incidence and severity, and this greater threat raises
questions as to the role of the state and the individual in risk mitigation strategies. Market-based
approaches also have a role as well as regulation, but many non-governmental policy instruments appear to
be weak and ineffective. Yet governments are short of money, and often have other priorities.
This module looks critically at the current policies and practices (mainly in the UK today but with 10
international ‘mini’ case studies and comparisons). The analysis is framed within a global context of changing
climate, changing public expectations and contested views as to the role of the state. It takes the viewpoint
that examining extremes (in this case floods) provides a ‘magnifying glass’ with which to examine
water/human relations generally, with all the inherent contradictions and complexities that this involves.
Teaching Approach
A series of six 1.75 to 2.00 hour classes will be given on a weekly basis. In each case there will be a brief
formal ‘lecture’ for 30-40 minutes, followed by a ‘Reading Workshop’ based on students’ reading of key
selected texts. Finally, there is a short session on the mini case studies from countries such as China,
Bangladesh, South Africa, Argentina, Canada and Taiwan.
Students will be expected to be familiar with these ‘Reading Workshop’ readings prior to attending classes,
and be able to summarize the key ideas and arguments. Detailed reading lists will be provided prior to each
class. Students will be allocated readings a week or two before the class, and will be expected to summarize
the key contents of – and lessons from – the papers allocated to them in a 5-minute session at the start of
each ‘Reading Workshop’. One student will be nominated the week before to summarize the ‘lessons learnt’
at the end of each session.
A short essay will be required about two thirds of the through the program, with immediate feedback, and a
“Secret Task” is also set, to be undertaken collectively by the whole group. The option will be assessed by
means of a 4,000 word essay to be handed in to either a) the OUCE MSc Coordinator or b) the ECI MSc
Coordinator on the first Monday of Trinity Term by noon. Subject to student demand, restrictions on
numbers attending this option may be imposed.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|24
Elective Outline
Lecture
1
Description
What is a flood, and how does science and policy development help us to enhance flood risk
management?
Discussion topic: The role of the private sector: flood insurance
Who has power in flood risk management and why?
2
Discussion topic: Theories of policy evolution and their philosophical underpinnings
How can risk be assessed, and what are the implications
3
4
5
Discussion topic: The role of spatial planning in managing this field of water security: UK and
international comparisons
What is efficient flood risk management, and why.
Discussion topic: Risk communication and warning
Flood risk and people: strategies, expectations, and delivery
Essay feedback and discussion
How can we manage the flood risk to London?
6
Discussion topic: EITHER: Social justice and flood risk management
OR: The wider international context: who does what, where and why?
Introductory Readings
Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., Davis, I. and Wisner, B. (1994) At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and
Disasters, Routledge, London.
DEFRA (2005) Making Space for Water: Taking forward a new Government strategy for flood an coastal
erosion management, DEFRA, London.
Evans, E., Ashley, R., Hall, J., Penning-Rowsell, E., Sayers, P., Thorne, C. and Watkinson, A. (2004) Foresight.
Future Flooding, Volume I and Volume II, Office of Science and Technology, Department of Industry, London.
Evans, E.P., Hall, J.W., Penning-Rowsell, E.C., Saul, A., Sayers, P.B., Thorne, C.R. and Watkinson, A.R. (2006)
Drivers, responses and choices for future flood risk management, Proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers,
Water Management, 159, 53-61.
Handmer, J.W. (2000) ‘Flood Hazard and Sustainable Development’, in Parker, D.J. (ed.) Floods, Routledge,
London, pp 276-86.
Kates, R.W. (1962) ‘Hazard and choice perception in flood plain management’, in Research paper No 78,
Department of Geography, University of Chicago.
Mileti, D.S. (1999) Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States, Joseph
Henry Press, Washington DC.
Parker, D.J. (2000) Floods, Routledge, London.
Teaching Staff
Professor Edmund Penning-Rowsell is a Distinguished Research Associate at OUCE and a geographer by
discipline, taking his PhD from University College London. His research interests are the political economy of
major hazards and how this affects decisions about investment in hazard mitigation. He has more than 40
years’ experience of research and teaching in the flood hazard field, analysing floods and investment in flood
alleviation, river management, water planning, and landscape assessment. His focus is on the social impact
of floods, and the policy response from regional, national and international organisations. He has published
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|25
several books and many papers on his research, and acted as consultant to numerous national and
international environmental agencies, including the OECD, the Red Cross/Crescent, the UN, the World Bank,
and the World Health Organisation. Edmund founded the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex
University in 1970. The Centre has been an acknowledged world leader in the socio-economic analysis of
flood hazards, and a British flagship in international research on natural disasters, risk and urban pollution.
This was recognized in 2000 by the Centre’s prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher
Education and the Centre’s 2002-04 leadership role in Sir David King’s ‘Future Flooding’ Foresight project. In
addition, the Centre’s research over 22 years on flooding and health has led to its inclusion in 2006 in the
Eureka100 list of Universities UK’s 100 most important research projects of the last 50 years.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|26
Indigenous Peoples and Environments
Elective Leader: Dr Thomas Thornton
Elective Rationale
The balance between human societies and their natural environments has become increasingly fragile. What
can the study of indigenous peoples teach us about this development? What light does the study of
indigenous, historical and non-Western cultures shed on contemporary environmental problems and
potential solutions? This course introduces the study of human ecology from an evolutionary and
intercultural perspective. The seminars are designed to provide you with:
 an overview and appreciation of the origins, development, and variation of human ecological
knowledge and practices around the world, including foraging, subsistence agriculture, pastoralism,
and intensive and industrial agriculture production systems, as well as their sustainability in relation
to present environmental conditions;
 an introduction to the major concepts, methods, theories and intellectual history of historical and
human ecology;
 an understanding of Indigenous or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (IK, TEK) as both a body of
knowledge and a cultural process of knowledge building, which may complement or conflict with
scientific knowledge and prove relevant in addressing contemporary environmental problems,
including ecosystem conceptualization and modelling, adaptation and resource management;
 a means of evaluating, amidst rapid environmental, social, and cultural change, the efficacy and
political ecology of maintaining indigenous knowledge systems and ecological practices as part the
world’s biocultural diversity and heritage.
Teaching Approach
The course will involve four 2-hour seminars organized by topic. Students will write an essay of
approximately 1000 words (4 sides) for three seminars, and take turns leading discussion. The elective will
be assessed based on a 4,000 word essay. The topic for this essay should be agreed with the elective leader
by the end of term and is due the first day of the following term.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
Indigenous Peoples, Conservation and Development: Leaders, Partners, Victims?
Indigenous peoples are implicated in both conservation and development schemes. How and
why are they so often disproportionately affected by both mainstream conservation and
development, and what concepts and tools do we need to appreciate and support indigenous
peoples’ cultural landscapes, knowledge, and practices to avoid deleterious impacts to the
their ecocultural health and sustainable futures?
Optional
Event:
Oct
13
2015
—
Hugh
Brody
Seminar
http://www.linacre.ox.ac.uk/about/events/anthropology-seminar-hugh-brody
and
Film,
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|27
2
3
4
Key Readings
Klein, N. (2014) ‘You and What Army? Indigenous Rights and the Power of Keeping our Word’,
in This Changes Everything, Penguin, London, ch. 11: 367-387.
Rapport, D. and Maffi, L. (2010) ‘The dual erosion of biological and cultural diversity:
Implications for the health of eco-cultural systems’, in Pilgrim, S. and Pretty, J. (eds.)
Nature and Culture: Rebuilding Lost Connections, Earthscan, London, 103-119.
Stevens, S. (ed.) (2014) Indigenous peoples, national parks, and protected areas: A new
paradigm linking conservation, culture, and rights, University of Arizona Press, Ch. 1:
15-46.
Thornton, T.F. (2008) ‘Place and Tlingit Senses of Being’, in Being and Place among the Tlingit,
University of Washington Press, ch. 1: 3-35.
Indigenous
Peoples
and
the
Development
Agenda:
Beyond
2015
(http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/Post-2015/IPs-and-Post-2015.pdf)
Historical Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge (TEK) Systems, and Biocultural Diversity
To what extent do indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems and historical ecological
relationships with land shape diverse environmental practices and landscapes?
Key Readings
Balée, W. (2013) Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People and Their
Landscapes, Parts III-IV, University of Alabama Press, pp. 119-184.
Harmon, D., Woodley, E. and Loh, J. (2010) ‘Measuring Status and Trends in Biological and
Cultural Diversity’, in Pilgrim, S. and Pretty, J. (eds.) Nature and Culture: Rebuilding
Lost Connections, Earthscan, p. 41-62.
Hornborg, A. (2006) ‘Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or not
Knowing) the World’, in Ethnos, 71(1), 21-32.
Ross, A., Pickering Sherman, K., Snodgrass, J.G., Delcore, H.D. and Sherman, R. (2011)
Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature: Knowledge Binds
and Institutional Conflicts, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA, Ch. 1. Pp 31-58.
Conservation, Cultivation and Sustainability of Indigenous Cultural-Ecological Systems
How diverse cultural-ecological systems conceptualize conservation, cultivation, and
sustainability? Under what circumstances do people conserve critical natural resources and
ecosystem services?
Key Readings
Berkes, F. and Turner, N. (2006) ‘Knowledge, Learning and the Evolution of Conservation
Practice for Social-Ecological System Resilience’, in Human Ecology, 34(4).
Hunn, E.S., Johnson, D.R., Russell, P.N. and Thornton, T.F. (2003) ‘Huna Tlingit Environmental
Knowledge, Conservation, and the Management of a “Wilderness” Park’, in Current
Anthropology, (44): 79-103.
Pierotti, R. (2010) ‘Ecological Indians’, in Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology, and Evolutionary
Biology, Routledge, 157-177.
Thornton, T., Deur, D. and Kitka Sr., H. (2015) ‘Cultivation of Salmon and other Marine
Resources on the Northwest Coast of North America’, in Human Ecology, 43(2): 189199.
Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, and Futures
Indigenous peoples and environmental change in a political-ecological and ethical-social
justice context.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|28
Key Readings
Dove, M. R. (2006) ‘Indigenous People and Environmental Politics’, in Annual Review of
Anthropology, 35:191-208.
Dove, M. R. (2005) ‘Shade: Throwing light on politics and ecology in contemporary Pakistan’,
in Paulson, S. and Gezon, L. (eds.) Political Ecology across Spaces, Scales and Social
groups, Rutgers University Press, 217-238.
Cassidy, R. (2012) ‘Lives With Others: Climate Change and Human-Animal Relations’, in Annual
Review of Anthropology, 41: 21-36.
Stevens, S. (ed.) (2014) Indigenous peoples, national parks, and protected areas: A new
paradigm linking conservation, culture, and rights, University of Arizona Press, ch. 12:
283-311.
Thornton, T.F. (2008) Being and Place among the Tlingit, ch 5-6, pp. 173-197. (In connection
with film, Haa Shagóon).
Additional Readings
The list below includes a broad list of readings beyond those assigned each week. Students will be
supplementing from the list below or beyond, based on their interests.
Agrawal, A. (2005) Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects, Duke Univ.
Press.
Agrawal, A. (1995) ‘Dismantling the Divide between Indigenous and Western Knowledge’, in Development
and Change, 26(3): 413-39.
Anderson, D. (2000) ‘Identity and Ecology’, in Arctic Siberia: The Number One Reindeer Brigade, Oxford
University Press.
Anderson, E.N. (2014) Caring for Place: Ecology, Ideology, and Emotion in Traditional Landscape
Management, Left Coast Press.
Anderson, E.N., Pearsall, D., Hunn, E. and Turner, N. (2011) Ethnobiology, Wiley-Blackwell.
Balée, W. (2013) Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People and Their Landscapes,
University of Alabama Press.
Balée, W. (2006) ‘The Research Program of Historical Ecology’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, 35:75–98.
Balée, W. and Erickson, C. (2006) Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical
Lowlands, Columbia University Press.
Barlow, J., Gardner, T.A., Lees, A.C., Parry, L. and Peres, C.P. (2012) ‘How pristine are tropical forests? An
ecological perspective on the pre-Columbian human footprint in Amazonia and implications for
contemporary conservation’, in Biological Conservation, 151: 45-49.
Barthel, S., Crumley, C. and Svedin, U. (2013) ‘Bio-cultural refugia—Safeguarding diversity of practices for
food security and biodiversity’, in Global Environmental Change, 23:1142-52.
Basso, K. (1996) Wisdom Sits and Places, University of New Mexico Press.
Berkes, F. (2012) Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management, Routledge.
Biersack, A. and Greenberg, J.B. (2006) Reimagining Political Ecology, Duke University Press.
Blaser, M. et al Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy, UBC Press, Vancouver.
Blaser, M., Feit, H.A. and McRae, G. (2004) In the Way of Development: Indigenous People, Life Projects, and
Globalization. (http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-58137-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html#).
Blaser, M., de Costa, R., McGregor, D. and Coleman, W.D. (2010) Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy,
University of British Columbia Press (esp. Ch 1,3).
Borgerhoff-Mulder, M. and Coppolillo, P. (2005) Conservation: Linking Ecology, Economics, and Culture,
Princeton University Press, Chapter 4.
Briggs, J. (2005) ‘The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges’, in Progress in
Development Studies, 5(2):99-114.
Colchester, M. (2004) ‘Conservation policy and indigenous peoples’, in Environmental Science & Policy, 7(3):
145-153.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|29
Comberti, C., Thornton, T.F., de Echeverria, V.W. and Paterson, T.M. (2015) ‘Ecosystem Services or Services
to Ecosystems? Valuing cultivation and reciprocal relationships between humans and ecosystems’, in
Global Environmental Change (forthcoming).
Crate, S.A. (2006) Cows, Kin and Globalization: an Ethnography of Sustainability, Alta Mira Press.
Crumley, C.L. (1994) Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, School of American
Research Press, Albuquerque NM.
Denevan, W. (2011) ‘The “Pristine” Myth Revisited’, in The Geographical Review, 101(4):576-591.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2011.00118.x/pdf.
Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin.
Dowie, M. (2011) Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and
Native Peoples, MIT Press.
Dowie, M. (2005) Conservation Refugees: When Protecting Nature means Kicking People Out, Orion,
Nov/Dec http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/161/.
Dove, M.R. (2006) ‘Indigenous People and Environmental Politics’, in Annual Review of Anthropology,
35:191-208.
Dove, M.R. (2011) The Banana Tree at the Gate: The History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in
Borneo, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Drew, J. (2005) ‘Use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Marine Conservation’, in Conservation Biology,
19(4):1286-1293.
Ellen, R., Parkes, P. and Bicker, A. (2000) Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations:
Critical Anthropological Perspectives, Harwood, Amsterdam.
Escobar, A. (2009) Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes, Duke University Press.
Fairhead, J. and Scoones, I. (2005) ‘Local knowledge and the social shaping of soil investments: critical
perspectives on the assessment of soil degradation in Africa’, in Land Use Policy, 22(1), 33-41.
Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. (1996) Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna
Mosaic, Cambridge University Press.
Harkin, M E., and David R Lewis. (2007) Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the
Ecological Indian, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Hames, R. (2007) ‘The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, 36: 177-90.
Heatherington, T. (2010) Wild Sardinia: Indigeneity and the Global Dreamtimes of Environmentalism,
University of Washington Press.
Homewood, K.M. (2008) Ecology of African Pastoralist Societies, James Curry.
Huntington, H.P. (2000) ‘Using Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Science Methods and Applications’, in
Ecological Applications, 10(5): 1270-1274.
Igoe, J. (2003) Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from
East Africa to South Dakota, Wadsworth.
Johannes, R.J. (2002) ‘Did indigenous conservation ethics exist?’, in SPC Traditional Marine Resource
Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin, #14.
Johnson, L.M. and Hunn, E.S. (2010) Landscape Ethnoecology: Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space,
Berghahn Books.
Johnson, S. (2012) Indigenous Knowledge, The White Horse Press.
Kelles-Viitanen, A. (2008) ‘Custodians of culture and biodiversity’, in Indigenous People Take Charge of Their
Challenges, IFAD, Rome, Passim
Kohn, E. (2013) How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human, University of California Press.
Krupnik, I. and Jolly, D. (2002) The Earth Is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental
Change, Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S.
Lansing, J.S. (2006) Perfect Order: RecognizingComplexity inBali.,Princeton University Press.
Li, T.M. (2007) The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics,Duke
University Press, Durham.
Mander, J. and Tauli-Corpus, V. (2006) Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization.
Maffi, L. (2001) On biocultural diversity: linking language, knowledge, and the environment, Smithsonian
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|30
Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Maffi, L. (2005) ‘Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, 29:599–617.
Mathews, A. (2011) Instituting Nature: Authority, expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests, MIT Press,
Cambridge.
McAnany, P.A. and Yoffee, N. (2010) Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and
the Aftermath of Empire, Cambridge University Press.
McCabe, J.T. (2004) Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies: Turkana Ecology, Politics, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium
System, University of Michigan Press.
Nakashima, D.J., Galloway McLean, K., Thulstrup, H.D., Ramos Castillo, A. and Rubis, J.T. (2012) Weathering
Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation, Paris, UNESCO,
and Darwin, UNU.
Orlove. B. (2002) Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca, University of California Press.
Paulson, S. and Gezon, L.L. (2005) Political Ecology across Spaces, Scales and Social Groups, Rutgers
University Press.
Pierotti, R. (2010) Indigenous knowledge, ecology, and evolutionary biology, Routledge.
Posey, D. et al. (1999) Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity: A Complementary Contribution to the
Global Biodiversity Assessment, Nairobi, UNEP.
Ramos, A.R. (1998) Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazi,: University of Wisconsin Press.
nd
Reed, R. (2008) Forest Dwellers, Forest Protectors: Indigenous Models for International Development (2
edition), Allyn & Bacon.
Ross, A., Pickering Sherman, K., Snodgrass, J.G., Delcore, H.D. and Sherman, R. (2011) Indigenous Peoples
and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature: Knowledge Binds and Institutional Conflicts, Left Coast
Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
Scott, J.C. (2009) The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale
University Press.
Sillitoe, P. (1998) ‘Knowing the land: soil and land resource evaluation and indigenous knowledge’, in Soil Use
and Management, 14(4): 188-193.
Sillitoe, P. (1998) ‘The Development of Indigenous Knowledge’, in Current Anthropology, 39(2): 223-252.
Stevenson, M.G. (2006) ‘The Possibility of Difference: Rethinking Co-Management’, in Human Organization,
65 (2): 167-180.
Swetnam, T.W., Allen, C.D. and Betancourt, J.L. (1999) ‘Applied Historical Ecology: Using the Past to Manage
for the Future’, in Ecological Applications, 9(4):1189-1206.
Tainter, J.A. (2006) ‘The Archaeology of Overshoot and Collapse’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, 35:59–
74.
Thornton, T.F. (1999) ‘Tleikw Aaní, The ‘Berried’ Landscape. The Structure of Tlingit Edible Fruit Resources at
Glacier Bay, Alaska’, in Journal of Ethnobiology, 19 (1): 27-48.
Thornton, T.F. (2008) Being and Place among the Tlingit, University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Thornton, T.F. (2012) Introduction to Haa Léelk’w Hás Aaní Saax’ú/ Our Grand Parents’ Names on the Land,
Pp xi-xxii. University of Washington Press.
Thornton, T.F., Moss, M.L., Butler, V.L., Hebert, J, and Funk, F. (2010) ‘Local and traditional knowledge and
the historical ecology of Pacific herring in Alaska’, in Journal of Ecological Anthropology, 14 (1):81-88.
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/jea/PDFs/ThorntonDataNotesJEAVol14.pdf.
Thornton, T.F. and Kitka, H. (2015) ‘An Indigenous Model of a Contested Pacific Herring Fishery in Sitka,
Alaska’, in International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research (IJAGR), 6(1), 94-117.
Tsing, A. (2004) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Princeton University Press.
Turner, N. (2008) The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living, University of Washington
Press.
Turner, N.J. and Clifton, H. (2009) ‘‘‘It’s so different today’: Climate change and indigenous lifeways in British
Columbia, Canada’, in Global Environmental Change ,19:180–190.
Walker, P.A. (2005) ‘Political Ecology. Where is the Ecology’, in Progress in Human Geography, 29(1): 73-82.
West, P. (2006) Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea, Duke
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University Press, Durham.
West, P., Igoe, J. and Brockington, D. (2006) ‘Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Area’, in
Annual Review of Anthropology, 35: 251-77.
Zent, S. (2009) ‘A Genealogy of Scientific Representations of Indigenous Knowledge’, in Heckler, S. (ed.)
Landscape, Process, Power: Re-evaluating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Berghahn Books., pp.
19-66.
Teaching Staff
Dr Thomas Thornton is an environmental anthropologist, trained at Swarthmore College (BA) and the
University of Washington (MA, PhD). He is the author of Being and Place among the Tlingit (University of
Washington Press, 2008), Haa Léelk'w Hás Aaní Saax'u / Our Grandparents' Names on the Land (University of
Washington Press and Sealaska Heritage Institute, 2012), and numerous articles and chapters on
environmental issues and policy among the indigenous peoples of the Far North and elsewhere, as well as
the editor of two books: Haa Aaní, Our Land: Tlingit and Haida Land Rights and Use (1998) and Will the Time
Ever Come? A Tlingit Sourcebook (2001, with Andrew Hope III). He serves as Director of the Environmental
Change and Management MSc and is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor in the ECI, SoGE. His
main research interests are in human ecology, adaptation, local and traditional ecological knowledge,
conservation, coastal and marine environments, conceptualizations of space and place, and the political
ecology of resource management among the indigenous peoples of North America and the circumpolar
North.
See www.eci.ox.ac.uk/people/thorntontom.php for further information.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|32
International Environmental Law
Elective Leader: Dr Catherine MacKenzie
Elective Rationale
This elective introduces students to international environmental law and considers how law may be used to
enhance international environmental protection. It commences with an overview of the international legal
system in the context of environmental protection. It then discusses the history, development, sources and
principles of international environmental law and reviews the role of the UN in the context of environmental
protection. Using case studies (which may include hazardous waste, nuclear energy, biotechnology and
GMOs), it explores damage, liability and dispute settlement in the international environmental context and
analyses the relationship between environmental protection and international trade.
This elective aims:

to provide an understanding of the sources, principles, institutions and processes of international
environmental law;
to explore the implementation and effectiveness of selected international environmental
agreements;
to identify emerging trends in international environmental law; and,
to develop in students the capacity to undertake independent legal research using primary and
secondary legal sources, including legal databases.



The topics listed below are indicative. Students may suggest alternatives. In previous years topics have
included endangered species, transboundary water, conflict diamonds, and environment and peace-keeping.
This elective is likely to be of particular interest to students who are seeking a career in law, international
relations, international organizations and public service, and to any student who wishes to develop the
capacity to read and understand international legal documents.
Teaching Approach
There will be four sessions. This elective is open to all students. Prior study of law is not required but
students must be willing to read widely in order to acquire an understanding of public international law (of
which international environmental law is one branch).
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
History, Development, Sources and Principles of International Environmental Law
This session provides an overview of the international legal system, analyses the relationship
between national and international law, and discusses the sources and principles of
international environmental law.
Hazardous Waste and Toxic Substances
This session discusses international regulation of toxic substances (including persistent
organic pollutants) and analyses the effectiveness of international agreements designed to
limit trade in hazardous waste.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|33
3
4
Nuclear Energy and the Environment
This session explores international regulation of nuclear energy and the control of
transboundary nuclear risks, and discusses state responsibility and civil liability for nuclear
damage.
Biotechnology and GMOs
This session analyses regulation of biotechnology and GMOs, considers the role of the
precautionary principle in international law-making, and discusses the relationship between
environmental protection and international trade.
Introductory Readings
Key textbooks
Birnie, P., Boyle, A.E. and Redgwell, C. (2009) International Law and the Environment, Oxford University Press
(3rd ed.).
Sands, S. (2012) Principles of International Environmental Law, Cambridge University Press.
Other useful books and websites
Evans, M.D. (2014) International Law, Oxford University Press (4th ed.).
Lowe, V. (2007) International Law, Oxford University Press.
Shaw, M.S. (2014) International Law, Cambridge University Press.
GlobaLex: A Basic Guide to International Environmental Law Research:
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/International_Environmental_Legal_Research.htm
American Society for International Law
International Environmental Law: http://www.asil.org/sites/default/files/ERG_ENVIROMENT.pdf
Electronic Resource Guide: http://www.asil.org/resources/electronic-resource-guide-erg
Squire Law Library: International Environmental Law:
http://squire.law.cam.ac.uk/electronic_resources/international_law_specific_topics.php#IEL
EcoLex: Gateway to Environmental Law: www.ecolex.org
United Nations International Law: http://www.un.org/en/sections/what-we-do/uphold-internationallaw/index.html
United Nations Environment Program: www.unep.org
Teaching staff
Dr Catherine MacKenzie is Visiting Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford, and a Bye-Fellow of
Homerton College, Cambridge. A member of the English and Australian Bars, she has been employed by
Allen & Overy, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations. Her research focuses
on international environmental treaties, international forest law and war and post-conflict state
reconstruction. She is co-editor of the book, Law, Tropical Forests and Carbon: the case of REDD+ (CUP,
2013) and her monograph, International Law and the Protection of Forests, will be published by OUP later
this year. She graduated from Oxford, the Inns of Court School of Law, Sydney University and the Australian
National University, at which she was a Commonwealth Scholar. She is currently Chairman of Examiners’ for
both the MSt in Diplomatic Studies at the University of Oxford and the MSt in Sustainability Leadership at
the University of Cambridge.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|34
International Climate Politics and Governance
Elective Leaders: Dr Harro van Asselt, Dr Chuks Okereke and Dr Dominic
Roser
Elective Rationale
In the run-up to arguably one of the key moments in international environmental politics in recent years, the
Paris climate change summit in December 2015, this elective will offer students a timely in-depth dive into
the international politics and governance of climate change. The elective offers an overview of the
international climate change process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, including a
discussion of recent developments, but it also places discussions in the UNFCCC in the context of the broader
developments in the climate governance landscape, including the emerging activities by non-state and
subnational actors.
In addition, the elective will examine how contested principles of justice affect the politics and governance
of climate change. Contestation over justice has been one of the most prominent features of the
international climate regime, and competing claims over how policies may be designed to realize justice
ideals remain to date some of the principal challenges facing international effort for global climate
governance. The elective will explore how these competing claims play out for practical issues in the climate
change negotiations (e.g. the notion of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ and the linkage between
climate change and human rights).
Teaching Approach
The elective will consist of a mix of lectures and discussions, with an emphasis on the latter. Students will be
expected to thoroughly read the assigned readings and write short essays for two of the six sessions. The
format of the essays will include an analysis of one of the elements of the forthcoming 2015 agreement and
writing an op-ed.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
Leader
Introduction to International Climate Politics
HvA
The first lecture introduces the international climate regime established by
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and
its Kyoto Protocol. It explains how negotiations have evolved since the
inception of the climate regime and places the climate regime against a
broader backdrop of an evolving climate governance architecture.
Key Readings
Asselt, H.v., Mehling, M. and Kehler-Siebert, C. (2015) ‘The Changing
Architecture of International Climate Change Law’, in Van Calster, Geert, Wim
Vandenberghe and Leonie Reins (eds.), Research Handbook on Climate
Change Mitigation Law, (pp. 1-30), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
Bodansky, D. and Rajamani, L. (2013) ‘Evolution and Governance Architecture
of the Climate Change Regime’, in Sprinz, D. and Luterbacher, U. (eds.),
International Relations and Global Climate Change, MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA.
Gupta, J. (2010) ‘A History of International Climate Change Policy’, in WIREs
Climate Change 1, 636-653.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|35
2
Keohane, R.O. and Victor, D.G. (2011) ‘The Regime Complex for Climate
Change’, in Perspectives on Politics, 9(1), 7-23.
Supplementary Readings
Biermann, F., Pattberg, P., van Asselt, H. and Zelli, F. (2009) ’The
Fragmentation of Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for
Analysis’, in Global Environmental Politics, 9(4), 14-40.
Bodansky, D.M. (1993) ‘The United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change: A Commentary’, in Yale Journal of International Law 18, 451558.
Depledge, J. and Yamin, F. (2009) ‘The Global Climate-change Regime: A
Defence’, in Helm, D. and Hepburn, C. (eds.), The Economics and Politics of
Climate Change. (pp. 433-453), Oxford University Press.
Principles and Mechanisms of the UNFCCC
This lecture will discuss some of the core principles of the UNFCCC, notably
that of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities. The lecture will also discuss mechanisms important in the
development of the international climate regime, namely mechanisms to
foster compliance, flexible, market-based mechanisms, and financial
mechanisms.
HvA
Key Readings
Figueres, C. and Streck, C. (2009) ‘The evolution of the CDM in a post-2012
climate agreement’, in Journal of Environment & Development, 18, 227-247.
Oberthür, S. (2014) ‘Options for a Compliance Mechanism in a 2015 Climate
Agreement’, in Climate La,w 4(1-2), 30-49.
Pickering, J., Jotzo, F. and Wood, P.J. (2015, forthcoming) ‘Splitting the
Difference: Can Limited Coordination Achieve a Fair Distribution of the Global
Climate Financing Effort?’, in Global Environmental Politics, 15(4).
Rajamani, L. (2013) ‘Differentiation in the Emerging Climate Regime’, in
Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 14(1), 151-172.
Supplementary Readings
Brunnée, J. and Streck, C. (2013) ‘The UNFCCC as a Negotiating Forum:
Towards Common but More Differentiated Responsibilities’, in Climate
Policy, 13(5), 589-607.
Boyd, E., Hultman, N., Timmons Roberts, J., Corbera, E., Cole, J., et al. (2009)
‘Reforming the CDM for Sustainable Development: Lessons Learned and
Policy Futures’, in Environmental Science & Policy, 12(7), 820-831.
Brunnée, J. (2003) ‘The Kyoto Protocol: Testing Ground for Compliance
Theories?’, in Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht,
63, 255-280.
Huggins, A. (2015) ‘The Desirability of Depoliticization: Compliance in the
International Climate Regime’, in Transnational Environmental Law, 4(1),
101-124.
Winkler, H. and Rajamani, L. (2014) ‘CBDR&RC in a Regime Applicable to All’,
in Climate Policy, 14(1), 102-121.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|36
3
4
Climate Governance Beyond the State
This lecture examines several climate governance initiatives undertaken by a
range of actors, including NGOs, business actors and local and regional
governments. It discusses how these initiatives have emerged and diffused,
as well as their potential effectiveness. It also discusses the relationship
between such climate governance beyond the nation state on the one hand,
and national and international climate governance on the other.
Key Readings
Abbott, K.W. (2012) ‘The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change’,
in Environment & Planning C, 30(4), 571-590.
Andonova, L.B., Betsill, M.M. and Bulkeley, H. (2009) ‘Transnational Climate
governance’, in Global Environmental Politics, 9(2), 52-73.
Hale, T. and Roger, C. (2014) ‘Orchestration and Transnational Climate
Governance’, in Review of International Organizations, 9(1), 59-82.
Okereke, C., Bulkeley, H. and Schroeder, H. (2009) ‘Conceptualizing Climate
Change Governance beyond the International Regime’, in Global
Environmental Politics, 9(1), 56-76.
Supplementary Readings
Abbott, K. (2014) ‘Strengthening the Transnational Regime Complex for
Climate Change’, in Transnational Environmental Law, 3(1), 57-88.
Betsill, M., Dubash, N.K., Paterson, M., van Asselt, H., Vihma, A. and Winkler,
H. (2015) ‘Building Productive Links between the UNFCCC and the Broader
Climate Governance Landscape’, in Global Environmental Politics, 15(2), 1–
10.
Bulkeley, H. (2010) ‘Cities and the Governing of Climate Change’, in Annual
Review of Environment and Resources, 35, 229-253.
Bernstein, S., Betsill, M., Hoffmann, M. and Paterson, M. (2010) ‘A Tale of
Two Copenhagens: Carbon Markets and Climate Governance’, in Millennium
– Journal of International Studies, 39(1), 161-173.
Principles of Justice and Climate Change
This lecture will look at various conceptions of justice in moral political
philosophy and the nature of climate policy they generate.
HvA
DR
Key Readings
Caney, S. (2014) ‘Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing
Burdens’, in The Journal of Political Philosophy, 22(2), 125-149.
Gardiner, S.M. (2004) ‘Ethics and Global Climate Change’, in Ethics, 114, 555600.
Grasso, M.A. (2007) ‘Normative Ethical Framework in Climate Change’, in
Climatic Change, 81, 223-246.
Klinsky, S. and Dowlatabadi, H. (2009) ‘Conceptualizations of Justice in
Climate Policy’, in Climate Policy, 9(1), 88-108.
Okereke, C. (2008). Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance:
Ethics, Sustainable Development and International Co-operation (London:
Routledge), Chapter 3.
Supplementary Reading
Moellendorf, D. (2012) ‘Climate Change and Global Justice’, in WIREs Climate
Change, 3(2), 131-143.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|37
5
6
Justice and International Climate Governance
CO
This lecture will focus on the question of whether the idea distributional
justice makes sense in the context of international regimes. The class will
review arguments for and international justice using climate change as the
main case study. Furthermore the lecture will examine how various principles
of justice have been mobilized around specific issues in international climate
policy and proposals for future climate governance
Key Readings
Heyward, M. (2007) ‘Equity and international climate change negotiation: a
matter of perspective’, in Climate Policy 7, 518-534.
Okereke C. (2010) ‘Climate Justice and the International Regime’, in WIREs
Climate Change 1, 462-474.
Okereke, C. (2008) ‘Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance:
Ethics’, in Sustainable Development and International Co-operation,
Routledge, London, Chapters 1-2.
Ringius, L., Torvanger, A. and Underdal, A. (2002) ‘Burden sharing and
Fairness principles in International Climate Policy’, in International
Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2, 1-22.
Supplementary Readings
Joffe, P. et al., Equity Lessons from Multilateral Regimes for the New Climate
Agreement
(WRI,
2013),
available
at:
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/equity_lessons_from_multilateral_reg
imes_for_the_new_climate_agreement.pdf
Okereke C. and Dooley, K. (2010) ‘Principles of justice in proposals and policy
approaches to avoided deforestation: Towards a post-Copenhagen climate
agreement’, in Global Environmental Change, 20, 82-95.
HvA
Review and Looking Forward
This lecture will provide opportunity for students to review and reflect on the
readings and discussions done on this module. Discussion will also focus on
options for building a more effective and equitable future climate regime.
Key Readings
Bodansky, D. and Diringer, E. (2014) Alternative Models for the 2015 Climate
Change Agreement. Available at: http://www.fni.no/doc&pdf/FNI-ClimatePolicy-Perspectives-13.pdf
Hare, W., Stockwell, C., Flachsland, C. and Oberthür, S. (2010) ‘The
Architecture of the Global Climate Regime: A Top-Down Perspective’, in
Climate Policy 10(6), 600-614.
Jordan, A.J., Huitema, D., van Asselt, H.. Hildén, M., Rayner, T.J., Boasson,
E.L., Forster, J., Schoenefeld, J. and Tosun, J. (2015, forthcoming) ‘The
Emergence of a New Climate Governance and Its Future Prospects’, in
Nature: Climate Change.
Rayner, S. (2010) ‘How to Eat an Elephant: A Bottom-up Approach to Climate
Policy’, in Climate Policy, 10(6), 615-621.
Supplementary Reading
Morgan, J., Dagnet, Y. and Tirpak, D. (2015) Elements and Ideas for the Paris
2015
Agreement
(Washington,
DC:
WRI),
available
at:
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/ACT_Elements_Ideas_final_w
eb.pdf
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|38
Teaching Staff
Harro van Asselt (PhD, cum laude, VU University Amsterdam) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm
Environment Institute. He is author of The Fragmentation of Global Climate Governance (Edward Elgar, 2014)
and co-editor of Climate Change Policy in the European Union: Confronting the Dilemmas of Mitigation and
Adaptation? (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He has published extensively on issues related to global
climate governance in edited books and journals, including Nature: Climate Change, Global Environmental
Politics, Climate Policy, Law & Policy and the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics.
He is editor of the Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law (RECIEL), and also
serves as Associate Editor of the Carbon and Climate Law Review.
Chukwumerije Okereke was appointed Reader in Environment and Development in June 2011. He was
previously a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Climate and Development Centre at the Smith School of
Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. He continues to be a visiting fellow of the Smith
School and Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute (ECI). He is also a fellow and college adviser
at the Green-Templeton College Oxford. Before joining Oxford, Chuks was a Senior Research Associate on
the Post-2012 International Climate Policy programme at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, University
of East Anglia. Chuks was a Lead Author in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), chapter on Sustainable Development and Equity. He also served as a Lead Author in
the United Nations Environment Programme's Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Assessment Report, chapter on Africa. Chuks was a member of the Expert Task Group on the Future Work of
the IPCC (2015) and the Expert Group on Strengthening African Group of Negotiators' (AGN) Position in
Global Climate Negotiation (2015).
Dominic Roser's research focuses on intergenerational justice, global justice, risk, non-ideal theory as well as
the relation between economics and ethics. This combination of topics has arisen out of his interest in
climate change. Currently, he works on a rights-based theory of decisions under risk and uncertainty and
how such a theory must both deviate from and learn from decision-theoretic accounts. He is particularly
concerned with applying this theory to risks to human rights of future generations and to the debate about
precautionary principles. Dominic Roser is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin Programme on Human
Rights for Future Generations and at the Law Faculty. He has a background in philosophy and economics and
has
previously
worked
at
the
Universities
of
Bern,
Zurich,
and
Graz.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|39
Water Security and Poverty
Elective Leaders: Dr Katrina Charles and Dr Robert Hope
Elective Rationale
Poverty dynamics are increasingly understood to be shaped by water security risks. Water security has been
defined by Grey and Sadoff (2007) as “the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for
health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to
people, environments and economies”. The relationship between water security and poverty is weakly
understood but of increasing global and national policy significance for balancing sustainable growth,
resource sustainability and inclusive water services. Significant but uncertain trends in how hydro-climatic
risks will impact poor and vulnerable groups at the local scale under converging trends of demographic
change, ecosystem degradation, growing industrial demands and weak governance. The aim of the course is
to critically examine emerging policy debates and new research initiatives on improving water security for
the poor, focusing on the challenges to achieving water security in three case study countries: Bangladesh,
Ethiopia and Kenya.
Teaching Approach
Seminars will run from 9:00 to 11:00 on Thursdays between 3rd to 8th weeks. Students will be expected to be
familiar with ‘key readings’ prior to attending seminar. Detailed reading will be provided prior to each class.
Students will be allocated readings a week or two before the class, and will be expected to summarise the
key contents of – and lessons from – the papers allocated to them during each seminars. One student will be
nominated the week before to summarise the ‘lessons learnt’ at the end of each session. Students receive
formative feedback for two short written essays of 1500 to 2000 words to be submitted after seminars 2 and
4.
In week 9 of Michaelmas term the REACH programme will be holding a conference in Oxford on Water
Security, relating to these three case study countries. Students are encouraged to attend.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
Leader
Water Security and Poverty
KC/RH
We will explore the relationship between water security and poverty, and consider
how the water security paradigm has developed and the extent to which it includes the
poor.
Key Readings
Cook, C. and Bakker, K. (2012) ‘Water security: debating an emerging paradigm’, in
Global Environmental Change, 22(1): 94-102.
Falkenmark, M. and Lundqvist, J. (1998, February) ‘Towards water security: political
determination and human adaptation crucial’, in Natural Resources Forum 22(1): 3751.
Garrick, D. and Hall, J.W. (2014) ‘Water Security and Society: Risks, Metrics, and
Pathways’, in Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 39: 611-639.
Grey, D. and Sadoff, C.W. (2007) ‘Sink or swim? Water security for growth and
development’, in Water Policy, 9(6): 545.
Vörösmarty, C. J., McIntyre, P.B., Gessner, M.O., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P.
and Davies, P.M. (2010) ‘Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity’,
in Nature, 467(7315), 555-561.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|40
2
3
4
Land management as water security: Ethiopia
In this session we explore sustainable land management practices as a pathway to
achieving water security and how it impacts the poor. Using the case study of Ethiopia,
a water scarce country where more than 80% live in rural areas and are engaged in
small-holder agricultural production, we explore the pathways to improving water
security for the poor.
Key Readings
Bantider, A., Hurni, H. and Zeleke, G. (2011) ‘Responses of rural households to the
impacts of population and land-use changes along the Eastern Escarpment of Wello,
Ethiopia’, in Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift-Norwegian Journal of Geography, 65(1): 42-53.
Boardman, J., Foster, I.D.L., Rowntree, K., Mighall, T. and Parsons, A.J. (2009) ‘Small
farm dams: a ticking time bomb?’, in Water Wheel, 8(4): 30-35.
Hurni, K., Zeleke, G., Kassie, M., Tegegne B., Kassawmar T., Teferi E., Moges A., Tadesse
D., Ahmed, M., Degu, Y., Kebebew, Z., Hodel, E., Amdihun, A., Mekuriaw, A., Debele, B.,
Deichert, G. and Hurni, H. (2015) ‘Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Ethiopia Case
Study. Soil Degradation and Sustainable Land Management in the Rainfed Agricultural
Areas of Ethiopia: An Assessment of the Economic Implications’, in Report for the
Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, 94. Available at http://eldinitiative.org/fileadmin/pdf/ELD_Ethiopia_2015_web.pdf
Shiferaw, A., Hurni, H. and Zeleke, G. (2013) ‘Long-term changes in soil-based
ecological services at three sites in Ethiopia’, in Journal of Ecology and the Natural
Environment, 5(8): 172-180.
World Bank Group (2015) Ethiopia Poverty Assessment 2014. Washington, DC. ©
World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/21323 License: CC
BY 3.0 IGO
Flood protection as water security: Bangladesh
In this session we explore coastal and riverine flood protection as a pathway to
achieving water security, using the case study of Bangladesh at the delta of the
Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna River where around 25% of the country is flooded
annually, and up to 70% in extreme flood events.
Key Readings
Brouwer, R., Akter, S., Brander, L. and Haque, E. (2007) ‘Socioeconomic vulnerability
and adaptation to environmental risk: a case study of climate change and flooding in
Bangladesh’, in Risk Analysis, 27(2): 313-326.
Carrel, M., Emch, M., Streatfield, P. K. and Yunus, M. (2009) ‘Spatio-temporal clustering
of cholera: The impact of flood control in Matlab, Bangladesh, 1983–2003’, in Health &
place, 15(3): 771-782.
Khandlhela, M. and May, J. (2006) ‘Poverty, vulnerability and the impact of flooding in
the Limpopo Province, South Africa’, in Natural Hazards, 39(2): 275-287.
Penning-Rowsell, E. C., Sultana, P. and Thompson, P.M. (2013) ‘The ‘last resort’?
Population movement in response to climate-related hazards in Bangladesh’, in
Environmental Science & Policy, 27: 44-59.
Groundwater as water security: Kenya
Access to groundwater is the primary drinking water source for over 200 million people
in Africa, but it is also an important water source for developing industries, such as
agriculture and mining. This session will focus on trade-offs in groundwater
development in Kwale, Kenya.
KC
RH/KC
RH
Key Readings
Giordano, M. (2009) ‘Global Groundwater? Issues and Solutions’, in Annu. Rev. Environ.
Resour. 34: 153–78.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|41
Gorelick, S. and Zheng, C. (2015) ‘Global Change and the Groundwater Management
Challenge’, in Water Resources Research 51(5): 3031-3051.
Hope, et al., ‘Groundwater Governance for Growth and Development’, in Water
Resources Research (under review).
Koehler, J., Thomson, P. and Hope, R. (2015) ‘Pump-Priming Payments for Sustainable
Water Services in Rural Africa’, in World Development, 74: 387-411,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.05.020 .
McMahon, G., Raymond, J. and Moreira, S. (2014) ‘The contribution of the mining
sector to socioeconomic and human development’, in Extractive industries for
development series, no. 30. Washington DC: World Bank Group. Accessed on 20
January
2015
at:
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/04/19435144/contributionmining-sector-socioeconomic-human-development.
Introductory Readings
Grey, D. and Sadoff, C.W. (2007) ‘Sink or swim? Water security for growth and development’, in Water Policy,
9(6): 545.
Sadoff et al. (2015) ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’, in GWP/OECD task force report, Oxford University
Press, Oxford. Available at:
http://www.gwp.org/Global/About%20GWP/Publications/The%20Global%20Dialogue/SECURING%20WATER
%20SUSTAINING%20GROWTH.PDF
Special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Water Security, Risk and Society (2014).
UNICEF/WHO (2015) Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water. 2015 update and MDG assessment
Available at:
http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/JMP-Update-report-2015_English.pdf
Vörösmarty, C.J., McIntyre, P.B., Gessner, M.O., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P. and Davies, P.M. (2010)
‘Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity’, in Nature, 467(7315): 555-561.
Teaching Staff
Katrina Charles is the course director for the MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, and co-director
of the REACH: Improving Water Security for the Poor research programme. She is an environmental
engineer who focuses on improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Throughout her career she
has worked on issues related to water and sanitation that include: public health, environmental fate and
transport of pathogens, impacts of climate change on access, and barriers to adequate sanitation in informal
settlements. Her work has been funded by the World Health Organization, DFID, UK Research Councils
(NERC/ESRC), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and includes work in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
Rob Hope is an Associate Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment and Director of the
Water Programme at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is a development economist
with expertise in water economics and development policy. His work applies economic theory and
techniques in the measurement, design and evaluation of policies and interventions which promote
improved environmental and social outcomes. This includes theoretical advances in behavioural economics
and social choice theory, methodological progress in interdisciplinary water research, and leadership in
establishing Oxford's cross-department research group working on 'Smart Water Systems'. He has won
competitive research grants from UK research councils (ESRC, NERC), DFID, UNICEF, John Fell Fund and the
Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. The research has featured in international media including BBC
television, radio and online. He is Director of the REACH – Improving Water Security for the Poor programme
(DFID, 2015-2022, www.reachwater.org.uk) and the Groundwater Risk Management for Growth and
Development project (NERC/ESRC/DFID, 2015-19, www.upgro.org). He also leads ESRC/DFID and UNICEF
grants.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|42
HILARY TERM
Analytical Skills in GIS
Elective Leader: Dr Robert Dunford
Elective Rationale
The GIS component of the research skills course for postgraduate students in the School is primarily about
understanding and displaying geographic data. It will allow interested students to import such data into a
GIS, perform some manipulations of the data, and produce high-quality cartographic output from the data
for use in students’ dissertations and future roles.
This elective module covers additional GIS skills, starting from the premise that GIS is not just a database
with coordinates, or a map-making tool, but a way of working with spatial data to find things out. The course
aims to provide students with an overview of the ways GIS can be used to critically address research
questions. The following key skills will be addressed:





How to get spatial data from a variety of sources into a GIS;
How to manipulate spatial data to produce maps;
How to link together geographic data of different types;
How to perform basic analyses to address research questions;
How to critically evaluate GIS output.
The module cannot hope to cover all the possible uses an enquiring student might want to put GIS to, but by
providing training in GIS tools of wide utility it will provide a foundation for building GIS tools to deal with
more specific tasks. The module is taught around the industry standard ArcGIS suite from ESRI.
Teaching Approach
The module will involve 8 hours of contact time split over weeks 4-8 of Hilary Term. Sessions will include an
introduction to GIS and the ways it is used in research and practical hands-on sessions with each student
developing their own GIS database with which to tackle a research question of their choice. The final analysis
of this GIS database will form the basis of their assessment.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
3
Description
An introduction to spatial data – what is a GIS and how do I get my data into it?
A basic introduction to GIS with a practical introduction to the raster and vector data types.
How to take spatial data and turn it into GIS layers.
Spatial analysis, the basics: how do I use my data?
Working with both raster and vector data to answer simple spatial research questions by
overlaying data. Using basic statistics inside and outside ArcGIS.
Advanced spatial analysis: how do I get the most out of my data?
Exploring options for analyses beyond simple overlays to answer more complex questions in
terms of spatial relationships.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|43
4
Critical GIS - does what I’ve done with my data make sense?
Further exploring advanced GIS techniques to answer research questions with a focus on
critically evaluating the approaches taken.
Introductory Readings
This elective is more focused on practical skills than literature. However, there are a number of books
available in section G70.212 of the Radcliffe Science Library (Lvl 2, downstairs) which provide an introduction
to the basics of GIS.
For example:
 Heywood et al. (2002/2011) An introduction to Geographic Information Systems.
 Ormsby et al. (2004/2010) Getting to know ArcGIS Desktop.
There are also a number of online GIS starter courses from the university at:
OUCS GIS Course:
http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/TMPF
and the RSL’s GIS Resources:
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps/making-maps
It is also worth looking into how GIS has been used within your potential research topic to get some ideas for
things that you may wish to do.
Finally, for some context on debates within GIS see:
 Abbott, et al. (1998) ‘Participatory GIS, opportunity or oxymoron?’, in PLA Notes, 33.
 Dunn, et al. (1997) ‘GIS for development: a contradiction in terms’, in Area, 29.2, 151-159.
 Dunn (2007) ‘Participatory GIS – a people’s GIS’, in Progress in human geography, 31, 616 DOI: DOI:
10.1177/0309132507081493.
 Openshaw (1991) ‘A view on the GIS crisis in geography, or using GIS to put humpty-dumpty back
together again’, in Environment and planning A, 23, 621-628.
 Openshaw (1992) ‘Further thoughts on geography and GIS: a reply’, in Environment and planning A,
24, 463-466.
 Taylor and Overton (1991) ‘Further thoughts on geography and GIS’, in Environment and planning A,
23, 1087-1094.
Teaching Staff
Dr Robert Dunford is a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Biodiversity and Climate Adaptation theme at the
Environmental Change Institute. He is a specialist in spatial information technology with over 13 years of
research experience using Spatial Databases, Remote Sensing and GIS (including the development of Online
GIS websites). Since 2010 Rob has been working at Oxford on a number of European-funded projects in
which he develops mixed method solutions to research challenges in the fields of climate change, integrated
assessment and ecosystem services (CLIMSAVE, BESAFE, OPENNESS and IMPRESSIONS). In 2013, Rob led a
consortium of experts in producing the scientific report underpinning the UK Climate Change Committee's
Adaptation Subcommittee's (ASC, a government advisory body) report "Managing the land in a changing
climate". He also led a report commissioned by the amphibian and reptile conservation trust (ARC-Trust)
identifying the key threats of climate change to all UK reptile/amphibian species through to the 2080s.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|44
Cities, Mobility and Climate Change
Elective Leader: Dr Tim Schwanen
Elective Rationale
While societies and cities benefit enormously from transport, mobility patterns across the world are deeply
unsustainable. Dependence on the private car has myriad adverse effects, including road congestion,
environmental degradation and social polarisation. Transport’s overwhelming dependence on fossil fuel is a
key concern and needs to be somehow overcome, also in global South cities where motorisation remains
tied to collectively held notions of progress and upward social mobility. Particularly in cities and urban areas,
policymakers and other stakeholders seek to reduce fossil fuel dependence and transport’s adverse
consequences in many different ways. Nevertheless, these are often based on narrow understandings of
mobility as movement from A to B and rooted in economic theory, characterised by strong dependence on
technological advances, and limited to interventions in transport systems and the physical structure of cities.
In this elective it is argued that a broader approach to understanding transport and cities is required if major
changes – transitions – in mobility are required to reduce transport’s contribution to anthropogenic climate
change and to make mobility systems more sustainable and resilient to the effects of climate change. This
broader approach understands transport as central to the fabric of cities and as emerging from
sociotechnical assemblages. The latter are intrinsically dynamic, spatially differentiated networks of human
agents, infrastructures, technologies, institutions, practices, knowledges and values. This thinking builds on
recent thinking from across geography and the social sciences, including innovation studies and urban
studies, and opens up new ways of achieving change in mobility.
The aim of ‘Cities, Mobility and Climate Change’ is to introduce this broader understanding of urban mobility
and explore some of the ways in which major changes in transport within cities can be achieved. The elective
explicitly seeks to be global in scope and orientation, moving beyond the common focus on Europe and
North America for empirical illustration and as basis of conceptualisation of the salient issues. More
specifically, we will:





Investigate the challenges of overcoming automobile dominance in cities and of realising radical changes
in how urban mobility is configured and governed;
Work with different understandings of the city and identify the implications of these for thinking about
change in urban mobility;
Explore multiple innovations and experiments with low-carbon urban mobility (cycling, bus rapid transit,
smartphone enabled shared mobilities, etcetera), their potentials and the barriers they face;
Examine the use of transport as part of everyday urban life and how this affects attempts to make urban
mobility more sustainable; and
Discuss how urban mobility can be made more resilient in light of ongoing climate change.
Teaching Approach
The elective consists of six two-hour sessions, each focusing on different aspects of sustainable cities,
transport and mobilities. A detailed outline of each session is given below.
Sessions will be interactive: the tutor(s) will introduce the topic and students are expected to deliver active
inputs throughout the session. This means that students have to prepare themselves before the session by
reading some literature and identifying topics for discussion. Below two types of reading suggestions are
given: pieces that provide key building blocks to the tutors’ introductions, and publications that provide
further information on topics discussed in the introductions. Students should aim to read at least the two
key references before the session.
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Elective Outline
Session
1
2
3
Description
The Mobility Challenge
This session will explore the key issues the elective seeks to address and offer a framework in
which the other sessions can be placed. It will start by a discussion of transport’s overwhelming
dependence on fossil fuel. This will be followed by an examination of the regime of
‘automobility’ that has arisen around the private car with its particular infrastructures, built
environments, institutions, cultural values and practices, and social stratifications. Issues of
social justice in relation to automobility will be explored as part of this. The lecture will
conclude by a critical examination of the rather limited set of options that tend to be pursued
by policy makers and other stakeholders to overcome fossil fuel dependence and to
reconfigure automobility.
Key Readings
Geels, F. (2012) ‘A socio-technical analysis of low-carbon transitions in transport systems:
Introducing the multi-level perspective into transport studies’, in Journal of Transport
Geography, 24: 471-482.
Hickman, R. and Banister, D. (2015) Transport, Climate Change and the City, Routledge, Oxford,
chapter 1.
Schwanen, T. (2015) ‘Automobility’, in Wright, J.D. (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition, Vol 2, Elsevier, Oxford, pp 303-308.
What is a city?
It is often taken for granted what a city is and definitions usually revolve around concentrations
of population, activity and infrastructures. In a world of global connections and flow such
understandings have become increasingly problematic, and geographers have been at the
forefront of attempts to rethink cities and the broader category of the urban. This session will
first introduce some of these attempts, most notably through a discussion of recent work on
planetary urbanisation and assemblage thinking. It will then argue for the importance of
‘provincialising’ European and North American cities. In a globalised world of automobility in
which the largest growth in transport volumes now occur across the global South, European
and North American cities can no longer be seen as the golden standard and sole basis for
theorising urban mobility. In the second hour of the session we will begin to draw out
implications of the recent theorisations of cities and urbanisation for thinking about achieving
change in urban transport.
Key Readings
Brenner, N. and Schmid, C. (2015) ‘Towards a new epistemology of the urban?’, in City, 19 (23): 151-182.
McFarlane C, 2011. Assemblage and critical urbanism. City 15 (2): 204-224.
Derrickson, K.D., (in press) ‘Urban geography I: Locating urban theory in the ‘urban age’’, in
Progress in Human Geography, DOI: 10.1177/0309132514560961.
Innovations and experiments in urban mobility
Cities are increasingly seen as the places where innovations that can trigger a transition
towards low-carbon mobility are emerging and maturing, and success stories of cities
experimenting with specific types of low-carbon mobility abound in the academic literature.
This session will examine such innovation processes. The potential contribution to a transition
towards more sustainable urban mobility will be evaluated critically, and some of the
challenges and barriers against diffusion and uptake of innovations will explored. Particular
emphasis will be placed on the importance of funding and political support, as well as
attunement to the specific characteristics of the place in which innovations and experiments
are unfolding. The focus will be on a range of UK cities, including Oxford, although attention
will also be paid to innovation processes in non-Western cities.
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4
5
6
Key Readings
Bulkeley, H. and Castán Broto, V. (2013) ‘Government by experiment? Global cities and the
governing of climate change’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 (3):
361-375.
Schwanen, T. (2015) ‘The bumpy road toward low-energy urban mobility: Case studies from
two UK cities’, in Sustainability, 7 (6): 7086-8111.
Schwanen, T. (in press) ‘Rethinking resilience as capacity to endure: automobility and the city’,
in City.
Urban mobility initiatives on the move
In this session we will zoom out from a focus on individual cities (session 3) to connections
between cities and the ways in which low-carbon mobility initiatives move across space and
time. This is important because, as will be argued, few initiatives regarding urban rail, cycling
and so forth are genuinely new and specific to individual cities: there is extensive copying from
activities elsewhere and spatial diffusion of innovations. The recent literature on policy
mobilities in geography and urban studies will be utilised to explore these activities, and the
‘Copenhagenisation’ of cycling and the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in South Africa will be
used as examples.
Key Readings
McCann, E. and Ward, K. (2013) ‘Policy assemblages, mobilities and mutations’, in Political
Studies Review, 10: 325-332.
Wood, A. (2015) ‘The politics of policy circulation: Unpacking the relationship between South
African and South American cities in the adoption of Bus Rapid Transit’, in Antipode, 47 (4):
1062-1079.
http://www.copenhagenize.com/
Choices, habits and practices
This session will consider the use of particular forms of transport by individuals as part of their
everyday lives as this is key to the success or failure of low-carbon forms of mobility. An
overview of different ways of conceptualisations of ‘behaviour change’ in academia
(economics, psychology, geography and sociology) will be provided, and their implications for
achieving more sustainable mobility patterns explored. The extent to which these
conceptualisations, whose origins lie squarely in the global North, need to provincialised will be
examined as well.
Key Readings
Schwanen, T. and Lucas, K. (2011) ‘Understanding auto motives’, in Lucas, K., Blumenberg, E.
and Weinberger, R. (eds.) Auto Motives: Understanding Car Use Behaviours, pp 3-38. Emerald,
Bingley.
Watson, M. (2012) ‘How theories of practice can inform transition to a decarbonised transport
system’, in Journal of Transport Geography, 24: 488-496.
Adapting to climate change
Research on mobility and anthropogenic climate change has overwhelmingly focused on how
the former’s contribution to the latter can be minimised, and with good reason: transport
remains one of the biggest and most difficult to reconfigure sources of greenhouse gas
emissions. However, it can be argued that given past carbon consumption and with the current
normalisation of ‘extreme’ weather events, the transport sector needs to adapt to ongoing
climatic changes, reduce vulnerabilities and increase its resilience. This session will critically
examine current modes of thinking among researchers and policymakers about these issues,
arguing for a need to move beyond technocratic approaches and techno-optimism and for due
attention to the politics of adaptation and the role of mobility in people’s everyday lives.
Examples from the UK and the Philippines will be discussed
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Key Readings
Jaroszweski, D., Hooper, E. and Chapman, L. (2015) ‘The impact of climate change on urban
transport resilience in a changing world’, in Progress in Physical Geography, 38 (4): 448-463.
Roberts, B. (2011) ‘Manila: metropolitan vulnerability, local resilience’, in Hamnett, S. and
Forbes, D. (eds.) Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience, pp 287-321.
Teaching Staff
Dr Tim Schwanen joined the Transport Studies Unit (TSU) in March 2009 and has been jointly appointed by
TSU and the School of Geography since November 2012. Before coming to Oxford he worked as a lecturer in
urban geography at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. At that university he also completed his PhD thesis
(2003, cum laude) and MSc thesis (1999, cum laude). Tim is one of the Deputy Directors of the RCUK funded
Research Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand (2013-2018) in which the University of Sussex
collaborates with the Universities of Manchester and Oxford. Tim's research can be positioned at the
intersection of urban, transport, cultural and political and economic geography. It is international in outlook,
interdisciplinary in scope and both theoretically oriented and empirical in nature. Key research interests
include: geographies of mobility; transitions to low-carbon and low-energy living and societies; geographies
of ageing; geographies of well-being; and research methodology and conceptualisations of time in
geography.
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Cities without Slums: policies and the urban poor
Elective Leader: Dr Katrina Charles
Elective Rationale
Slums, shantytowns, favelas, chawls, informal settlements, self-help settlements. There are many names for
them. Rapid growth of urban areas in the developing world is exceeding the capacity of the government to
provide affordable housing and services, resulting in the urban poor helping themselves to housing that is
affordable. But these developments often fail to provide adequate housing. They are also often perceived as
a threat to the formal settlements. UN-Habitat is working to gradually attain a target of “Cities Without
Slums”. The aim of the course is to critically examine the origins of slums and the pathways to development
for slums.
Teaching Approach
Seminars will run from 9.00 to 11.00 on Mondays between 3rd to 8th weeks. Students will be expected to be
familiar with ‘key readings’ prior to attending seminar. Detailed reading will be provided prior to each class.
Students will be allocated readings a week or two before the class, and will be expected to summarise the
key contents of – and lessons from – the papers allocated to them during each seminars. One student will be
nominated the week before to summarise the ‘lessons learnt’ at the end of each session. Students receive
formative feedback for two short written essays of 1500 to 2000 words to be submitted after seminars 2 and
4.
Elective Outline
Seminar
1
2
Description
What is a slum?
We will explore the development of the definition and terminology used for slums and the
debates around how slums issues are framed.
Key Readings
Ekdale, B. (2014) ‘Slum discourse, media representations and maisha mtaani in Kibera,
Kenya. Ecquid Novi’, in African Journalism Studies, 35(1): 92-108.
Gilbert, A. (2007) ‘The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter?’, in International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(4): 697-713.
Gooptu, N. (1996) 'The 'Problem' of the Urban Poor: Policy and Discourse of Local
Administration: A Study in Uttar Pradesh in the Interwar Period', in Economic and Political
Weekly, 31(50): 3245-3254
Solzbacher, R.M. (1970) ‘East Africa's slum problem: a question of definition’, in Urban
Growth in Subsaharan Africa, Makerere University, Kampala.
Experiences of slums
We will develop a deeper understanding of the people who live in slums. Why have they
moved there? What are the challenges they face in day-to-day living?
Key Readings
Braun, B. and Aßheuer, T. (2011) ‘Floods in megacity environments: vulnerability and
coping strategies of slum dwellers in Dhaka/Bangladesh’, in Natural Hazards, 58(2): 771787.
COHRE (2008) ‘Women, Slums and Urbanisation: Examining the Causes and
Consequences’, in Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), Geneva:
http://www.cohre.org/sites/default/files/women_slums_and_urbanisation_may_2008.pdf
Eckstein, S. (1990) ‘Urbanization revisited: inner-city slum of hope and squatter settlement
of despair’, in World Development, 18(2): 165-181.
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3
4
Joshi, D., Fawcett, B. and Mannan, F. (2011) ‘Health, hygiene and appropriate sanitation:
experiences and perceptions of the urban poor’, in Environment and Urbanization, 23(1):
91-111.
Perlman, J.E. (2005) ‘The Myth of Marginality Revisited: The Case of Favelas in Rio De
Janeiro’, in Hanley, L.M., Ruble, B.A. and Tulchin, J.S. Becoming global and the new poverty
of cities, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Comparative Urban Studies
Project.
Rashid, S.F. (2007) ’Accessing Married Adolescent Women: The Realities of Ethnographic
Research in an Urban Slum Environment in Dhaka, Bangladesh’, in Field Methods, 19(4):
369-383.
Slum policies
This session will focus on the Millennium Development Goals target 7d: Achieve, by 2020,
a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, reviewing the
progress made towards this target and the criticisms of international and national policy
for the urban poor.
Key Readings
Cohen, M. (2013) ‘The City is Missing in the Millennium Development Goals: Where is the
city?’, in Working Paper Series, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of
Public Health, Boston.
Gilbert,
A.
(2014)
Shelter
and
the
Millennium
Development
Goals:
http://www.developmentprogress.org/blog/2014/01/20/shelter-and-millenniumdevelopment-goals
Greene, S.J. (2003) ‘Staged Cities: Mega-events, Slum Clearance, and Global Capital’, in
Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, 6(1), Article 6.
Marx, B., Stoker, T. and Suri, T. (2013) ’The Economics of Slums in the Developing World’,
in Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(4): 187-210.
Meth, P. (2013) ‘Viewpoint: Millennium development goals and urban informal
settlements: unintended consequences’, in International Development Planning Review,
35(1): v- xiii.
Cities without slums?
In this session we will critically review case studies of slum upgrading programmes
addressing different aspects of housing, water, sanitation, and tenure security; wrapping
up by reflecting on the aim of achieving cities without slums.
Key Readings
Arimah, B.C. (2004) Slums as expression of social exclusion: Explaining the prevalence of
slums in African countries.
Butala, N.M., VanRooyen, M.J. and Patel, R.B. (2010) ‘Improved health outcomes in urban
slums through infrastructure upgrading’, in Soc Sci Med, 71(5): 935-940.
UN-Habitat (2014) ‘Streets as Tools for Urban Transformation in Slums’, in A Street-Led
Approach to Citywide Slum Upgrading, UN Habitat
World Bank (2013) Cities alliance for cities without slum: action plan for moving slum
upgrading to scale, World Bank, Washington DC.
Introductory Readings
Boo, K. (2012) Behind the beautiful forevers: Life, death and hope in a Mumbai undercity, Random House
Trade Paperbacks.
Davis, M. (2006) Planet of Slums, Verso, London.
Parsons, A. (2010) The Seven Myths of ‘Slums’ – Challenging Popular Prejudices About the World’s Urban
Poor, Share The World’s Resources, UK.
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UN Habitat (2003) ‘The Challenge of Slums - Global Report on Human Settlements 2003’, in United Nations
Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Nairobi, Kenya.
Turner, J.F.C. and Fichter, R. (1972) Freedom to Build, Macmillan, New York, chapters 6 & 7 (available online
via http://www.hic-net.org).
Teaching Staff
Katrina Charles is the course director for the MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management. She is an
environmental engineer with a passion for improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Throughout her career she has worked on issues related to water and sanitation that include: public health,
environmental fate and transport of pathogens, impacts of climate change on access, and barriers to
adequate sanitation in informal settlements. Her work has been funded by the World Health Organization,
DFID, UK Research Councils (NERC/ESRC), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and includes work in
Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Dr Charles undertook her PhD on a risk-based approach to management of
decentralised wastewater treatment systems in Sydney's drinking water catchments in Australia.
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CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER
Elective Leaders: Professor Myles Allen and Dr Friederike Otto
Elective Rationale
This course will provide an introduction to the principles behind the numerical simulation of climate and
climate change, focussing on how climate models can be used to inform climate policy and in particular to
answer the question whether and to what extent climate change plays a role in different types of extreme
weather events. The elective is designed to give students an insight into how climate research and data
analysis is done in practice, including an introduction to code written in R. Students will have the option to
do hands-on data analysis for their submitted work.
Teaching Approach
The course will be delivered through eight hours of interactive classes.
The first classes will provide an overview of the principles underlying the simulation of weather and climate
with chaotic three-dimensional general circulation models, focussing on characteristic scales in the
atmosphere and ocean, the concept of resolved behaviour and the role of unresolved processes and
parameterisation. The emphasis will be on the origins of uncertainty in these models and objective measures
of model quality and reliability. Examples will be drawn from the CMIP-5 model inter-comparison projects,
and the climateprediction.net perturbed-physics ensemble experiments. The focus of the second of these
lectures will be on regional climate modelling.
The second half of the elective will focus on the attribution and interpretation of extreme weather events.
Building on the understanding of regional climate modelling we will explore how these models can be used
to not only detect changes but also attribute causes of changes in extreme weather events. You will be given
the opportunity to explore the importance of ensemble size and need for model validation working with
output of climateprediction.net experiments.
The attribution of extreme events is not just becoming scientifically more robust but also increasingly
important politically. Mitigation efforts have failed to prevent the continued increase of anthropogenic
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adaptation measures are unlikely to be sufficient to prevent negative
impacts from current and future climate change. In this context, vulnerable nations argue that existing
frameworks to promote mitigation and adaptation are inadequate, and have called for a third international
mechanism to deal with residual climate change impacts, or “loss and damage”. Attribution of extreme
events is the only way of providing scientific evidence to the loss and damage agenda, however, whether it is
supposed to play a role in the politics is highly debated.
Assessment will be through a 4,000 words essay. This may comprise an exploration of the behaviour of the
idealised Earth System model or the analysis of datasets from existing coupled model experiments including
CMIP5 or climateprediction.net. Some familiarity with computing will therefore be an advantage for this
elective, although the code will also be talked through in class.
Introductory Readings
Allen, M.R. (2003) ‘Liability for climate change’, in Nature, 421:891-892.
Allen, M.R. (1999) ‘Do it yourself climate prediction’, in Nature, 401, 642.
Allen, M.R. and Ingram, J. (2002) ‘Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrologic cycle’, in
Nature, 419:224-232.
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Barnett, T.P., Zwiers, F., Hegerl, G., Allen, M.R., Crowley, T., Gillett, N., Hasselmann, K., et al. (2005)
‘Detecting and attributing external influences on the climate system: A review of recent advances’, in Journal
Of Climate, 18(9), 1291–1314.
Bindoff, N.L., Stott, P.A., AchutaRao, K.M., Allen, M.R., Gillett, N., Gutzler, D., Hansingo, K., Hegerl, G., Hu, Y.,
Jain, S., Mokhov, I.I., Overland, J., Perlwitz, J., Sebbari, R. and Zhang, X. (2013) ‘Detection and Attribution of
Climate Change: from Global to Regional’, in Stocker, T.F., Qin, D., Plattner, G-K., Tignor, M., Allen, S.K.,
Boschung, J., Nauels, A., Xia, Y., Bex, V. and Midgley, P.M. (eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science
Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, UK and New York, USA:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf
Hegerl, G., Karl, T., Allen, M.R., Bindoff, N., Gillett, N., Karoly, D., Zhang, X., et al. (2006) ‘Climate change
detection and attribution: beyond mean temperature signals’, in Journal Of Climate, 19(20), 5058–5077.
IPCC (2012) - Field, C.B., Barros, V., Stocker, T.F., Qin, D., Dokken, D.J., Ebi, K.L., Mastrandrea, M.D., Mach,
K.J., Plattner, G-K., Allen, S.K., Tignor, M. and Midgley, P.M. (eds.) Cambridge University Press, pp.582:
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
Peterson, T.C., Stott, P.A. and Herring, S. (2012) ‘Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate
Perspective’, in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.
Peterson, T.C., Hoerling, M.P., Stott, P.A. and Herring, S. (2013) ‘Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a
Climate Perspective’, in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94 (9), S1–S74.
Stone, D.A. et al (2009) ‘The Detection and Attribution of Human Influence on Climate’, in Ann. Rev. Environ.
Res., 34, 1-6.
Stott, P.A. et al (2010) Detection and attribution of climate change: a regional perspective, 1(2),pp. 192-211.
Case studies and event attribution
Cattiaux, J., Vautard, R., Cassou, C., Yiou, P., Masson-Delmotte, V. and Codron, F. (2010) ‘Winter 2010 in
Europe: A cold extreme in a warming climate’, in Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L20704.
Christidis, N., Stott, P.A. and Brown, S.J. (2011) ‘The role of human activity in the recent warming of
extremely warm daytime temperatures’, in Journal of Climate, 24, 1922–1930.
Christidis, N., Stott, P.a., Zwiers, F.W., Shiogama, H. and Nozawa, T. (2010) ‘Probabilistic estimates of recent
changes in temperature: a multi-scale attribution analysis’, in Climate Dynamics, 34, 1139-1156.
Christidis, N., et al. (2013) ‘A new HadGEM3-A based system for attribution of weather and climate-related
extreme events’, in J. Clim., doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00169.1
Coelho, C.A.S. et al. (2008) ‘Methods for exploring spatial and temporal variability of extreme events in
climate data’, in Journal of Climate, 21.10, 2072-2092.
Dole, R. et al., (2011) ‘Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave?’, in Geophys. Res. Lett.,
38, L06702.
Forest, C.E., Allen, M.R., Stone, P.H. and Sokolov, A.P. (2000) ‘Constraining uncertainties in climate models
using climate change detection techniques’, in Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 569-572.
Fowler, H.J. and Wilby, R.L. (2010) ‘Detecting changes in seasonal precipitation extremes using regional
climate model projections: Implications for managing fluvial flood risk’, in Water Resources Research, 46,
W03525.
Gillett, N.P., Hegerl, G.C., Allen, M.R. and Stott, P.A. (2000) ‘Implications of changes in the Northern
Hemisphere circulation for the detection of anthropogenic climate change’, in Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 993996.
Gillett, N.P., Zwiers, F.W., Weaver, A.J. and Stott, P.A. (2003) ‘Detection of human influence on sea-level
pressure’, in Nature, 422, 292-294.
Hegerl, G. and Zwiers, F. (2011) ‘Use of models in detection and attribution of climate change’, in WIREs
Climate Change, 2, 570-591.
Hegerl, G.C., Zwiers, F.W. and Tebaldi, C. (2011) ‘Patterns of change: Whose fingerprint is seen in global
warming?’, in Environmental Research Letters, 6, 044025.
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Kharin, Viatcheslav, V. and Zwiers, F.W. (2005) ‘Estimating extremes in transient climate change
simulations.’, in Journal of Climate, 18.8, 1156-1173.
Lott, F., Christides, N. and Stott, P. (2013) ‘Can the 2011 East African drought be attributed to
anthropogenic climate change?’, in Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 1177-1181.
Otto, F.E.L., Massey, N. van Oldenborgh, G.J., Jones, R.G. and Allen, M.R. (2012) ‘Reconciling two approaches
to attribution of the 2010 Russian heat wave’, in Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L04702.
Pall, P. et al. (2011) ‘Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to UK autumn flood risk’ in Nature, 470,
382–385.
Rahmstorf, S. and Coumou, D. (2011) ‘Increase of extreme events in a warming world’, in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 17905-17909.
Seneviratne, S.I. (2012) ‘Historical drought trends revisited’, in Nature, 491, 338–339.
Stone, D.A., and Allen, M.R. (2005) ‘Attribution of global surface warming without dynamical models’, in
Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L18711.
Stott, P.A., Jones, G.S., Christidis, N., Zwiers, F.W., Hegerl, G. and Shiogama, H. (2011) ‘Single-step attribution
of increasing frequencies of very warm regional temperatures to human influence’, in Atmospheric Science
Letters, 12, 220-227.
Stott, P.A., Stone, D.A. and Allen, M.R. (2004) ‘Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003’, in
Nature, 432, 610-614.
Zhang, X.B. et al. (2007) ‘Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends’, in Nature,
448, 461-465.
Teaching Staff
Professor Myles R. Allen is the Principal Investigator of climateprediction.net and was the first to propose
the use of Probabilistic Event Attribution to quantify the contribution of human and other external
influences on climate to specific individual weather events. He is Professor of Geosystem Science in the
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group.
Dr Friederike E.L. Otto is the scientific coordinator of the project. Her main research interest is the
quantification of uncertainty and validation of climate models, in particular with respect to extreme events,
in order to undertake attribution studies of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. Friederike is
a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
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Climate Change, Communication and the Media
Elective Leader: Dr James Painter
Elective Rationale
Most people in most countries of the world get their news about scientific and environmental issues,
including climate change, from the mainstream media. Despite the rapid increase in the use of online and
new media, television and other traditional media remain used and trusted sources. But climate change
science reporting poses a difficult challenge: the science remains complex, incremental and at times
uncertain, whereas the media are attracted to certainty, drama, novelty and contrarian views, even though
they may be unrepresentative. Opinion polls in many Western countries appear to show that even though
the science of climate change is becoming more certain, the public is becoming more sceptical about the
science underpinning it. The role of new media – and particularly the blogosphere - has played a central role
in giving oxygen to this scepticism. There are also important differences between countries as to the ways
climate change is reported. For example, why is scepticism prevalent in the media in most Anglo-phone
countries (UK, Australia, USA), but not elsewhere?
In the seminars, we will focus on:
 The drivers and shapers of media coverage of climate science, and the obstacles to better reporting.
 The dominant themes which journalists use to cover climate change, and the relationship between
these media treatments and public attitudes, understanding and engagement.
 The media are often accused of ‘false balance’ by giving too much attention to sceptical viewpoints –
what accounts for their presence, and for the differences between countries in their prevalence?
 How online and social media may be changing the way people consume information about climate
change.
Teaching Approach
This course will be taught over four weeks in two-hour sessions. The sessions will be run as a discussion. Please
come prepared to talk about the core readings. In addition, each week two students will be asked to briefly
discuss an assigned reading on a special topic; they will then submit a 1,000 word essay based upon this. Each
student should also submit an additional essay (over the course of the term), based upon the core readings
assigned each week. You may choose these based upon personal preference. These essays are an
opportunity for you to practice writing and to get informal feedback from me. If you wish to be assessed,
you must also submit an essay of no more than 4,000 words on a topic that we both agree on. These essays
are due at the start of the next term.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
Trends and obstacles in international climate change reporting
What are the main drivers of the type and volume of climate change reporting? What are the
obstacles to better, or more frequent, reporting of climate change in the mainstream media?
Is it primarily the media’s fault?
Climate change reporting and public responses
What are the main themes that journalists use when they cover climate change issues? Are they
changing? What do we know about the effect of different types of climate change reporting on
public attitudes and behaviour? What are the possible impacts of fear-based reporting?
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3
4
Balance and bias
Balance and bias in the reporting of climate change are hotly contested issues. At what point
should journalists stop quoting sceptics? All sceptics or just some types of sceptics? Are the
media guilty of the ‘bias of balance’? Should the media call them ‘sceptics’? Special attention
will be paid to the inter- and intra-country differences, and what explains them.
Online and social media
Most people under 35 now get their news from online sites or social media. How does that
change the way they consume and process information about climate change? Does the boom
in ‘digital natives’ like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed or Vice add plurality or promote likeminded thinking? Do niche sites improve coverage or make climate change more of a specialist
topic?
Introductory Readings
Corner, A., Markowitz, E. and Pidgeon, N. (2014) ‘Public engagement with climate change: the role of human
values’, in WIREs Climate Change, 5: 411–422.
Hulme, M. (2009) ‘Chapter 7’, in Why we disagree about climate change: understanding controversy,
inaction and opportunity, Cambridge University Press.
Moser, S. (2010) ‘Communicating climate change: history, challenges, process and future direction’, in WIREs
Climate Change, 1, 31-53.
Nature Climate Change (2015), special edition on Media and Climate Change, April (Vol 5 no 4).
O’Neill, S. and Nicholson-Cole, S. (2009) ‘"Fear won't do it": promoting positive engagement with climate
change through visual and iconic representations’, in Science Communication, 30, 355-379.
Painter, J. (2011) Poles apart: the international reporting of climate scepticism, RISJ: Oxford UK.
Painter, J. (2013) Climate change in the media: reporting risk and uncertainty, I.B.Tauris.
Teaching Staff
Dr James Painter is Director of the Journalism Fellowship Programme at the Reuters Institute for the Study
of Journalism (RISJ), which belongs to the Department of Politics and International Relations. One of his main
areas of research is the study of climate change in the media. He is the author of four RISJ
publications: Summoned by Science: Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and Beyond (2010); Poles
Apart: the international reporting of climate scepticism (2011); Climate Change in the Media: reporting risk
and uncertainty (2013), and Disaster Adverted? Television coverage of the 2013/14 IPCC climate change
reports (2014). He has published extensively on climate change and the media in academic journals and
elsewhere.
See
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-james-painter-director-journalism-fellowshipprogramme. Formerly James worked at the BBC World Service from 1992, where he was head of the Spanish
American Service, head of the BBC Miami office, and Executive Editor Americas.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|56
Ecosystem Services for Development
Elective Leaders: Dr Alex Morel and Dr Mark Hirons
Elective Rationale
The interactions between the environment and development are complex and highly contested. For example
researchers are asking questions such as: are people richer or poorer because of environmental
degradation? What ecological and social factors drive the different development outcomes observable on
local-to-global scales, and what is the relative importance of the environment?
The ecosystem services framework has emerged both in response to the need to articulate the benefits of
ecosystems to human well-being and to facilitate mechanisms which provide financial incentives for proenvironmental land management. , Much of the academic work on ES has, to date, primarily focused on the
financial valuation of ecosystems, but the role of culture and politics as a mediator between ecosystems and
their role in well-being is just beginning to be addressed. Furthermore ecologists are questioning whether
the ES framework, as currently formulated, facilitates scientific advances in understanding the functional
mechanisms which underlie the provision of ecosystem services. These ‘research gaps’ may undermine
sound decision-making at the interface between development and environmental management.
This course engages with these critiques through an examination of agriculture as a case where poverty and
ecology are intertwined and where development agendas have often focused on improving agricultural
productivity without considering local ecological constraints
Participation in this elective will equip students with the conceptual tools to engage with cutting-edge
thinking on the application of the ecosystem services framework and address theoretical and practical
challenges in tackling the complex issues around poverty and its linkages with the environment. Students will
also deepen their understanding of the value of interdisciplinary research for picking apart seemingly
intractable development/environmental challenges.
Teaching Approach
The course will adopt a case study approach. Specifically it will draw on insights from the elective leader’s
participation an interdisciplinary Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) project, focusing on
coffee production in Ethiopia.
This course will be presented in six 90-minute seminars through a combination of short instructor-led
presentations and guided group discussion based on the presentation and the week’s readings. Students
will be encouraged to critically reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the both the ecosystem services
and multi-dimensional poverty frameworks and the realities of interdisciplinary research.
The module will be assessed through a presentation (presented in session 6) and a term paper of 4,000
words on a topic to be agreed with the elective leaders.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
Lecturer
Ecosystem Services to the Rescue?
AM
Who can speak for the trees? This session will introduce and critically appraise the
ecosystem services framework. In response to a global economy designed for
maximizing financial throughput at the expense of the environment, scientists and
advocates worked to develop a framework that could incorporate the contribution to
human well-being both directly and indirectly from the world’s ecosystems. The
result was a multi-scale conceptualization of ecosystem services as provisioning,
supporting, regulating and culturally underpinning society. This session reviews the
history of the framework and its principal critiques.
Key Readings
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2
3
4
Daw, et al. (2011) ‘Applying the ecosystem services concept to poverty alleviation:
the need to disaggregate human well-being’, in Environmental Conservation, 38(4):
370-370.
Fisher, et al. (2009) ‘Defining and classifying ecosystem services’, in Ecological
Economics, 68: 643-653.
Gómez-Baggethun, et al. (2010) ‘The history of ecosystem services in economic
theory and practice: From early notions to markets and payment schemes’, in
Ecological Economics, 69: 1209-1218.
McCauley, D.J. (2006) ‘Selling out on nature’, in Nature, 443: 27-28.
Ecology and Development… Ecology for Development?
Money, power, politics, freedom… what is development? This session provides a
foundation and forum for critically reflecting on the development agenda, the key
institutions that shape it and how ecological issues are situated within debates.
Key Readings
Fisher, et al. (2013) ‘Strengthening conceptual foundations: Analysing frameworks
for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation research’, in Global Environmental
Change, 23: 1098-1111.
Grey and Moseley (2005) ‘A geographical perspective on poverty-environment
interactions’, in The Geographical Journal, 171: 9-23.
Suich, et al. (2015) ‘Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation – a review of the
empirical links’, in Ecosystem Services, 12: 137-147.
Wegner and Pascual (2011) ‘Cost-benefit analysis in the context of ecosystem
services for human well-being: A multidisciplinary critique’, in Global Environmental
Change, 21: 492-504.
Agriculture, Ecosystem Services and Development
Ecosystem services and development are intertwined in agriculture. Many
developing countries promote economic development through increasing
agricultural yields of small farmers. This session will explore the debates around
sustainable intensification and the interaction between ecosystems, agricultural
production and development.
Key Readings
Bommarco, et al. (2013) ‘Ecological intensification: harnessing ecosystem services for
food security’, in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 28: 230-238.
Loos, et al. (2014) ‘Putting meaning back into sustainable intensification’, in Frontiers
in ecology and the environment. 12: 356-361.
Norgaard (2010) ‘Ecosystem Services: From Eye-opening Metaphor to Complexity
Blinder’, in Ecological Economics, 69: 1219–1227.
Rigg (2006) ‘Land, farming, livelihoods and poverty – rethinking the link in the Rural
South’, in World Development, 24: 180-202.
Zhang, et al. (2007) ‘Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture’, in Ecological
Economics, 64: 253-260.
Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation – The case of Ethiopian Coffee
The world has Kaldi, an observant Ethiopian goat herd, to thank for discovering
coffee. In this session we will discuss the socio-ecology of contemporary coffee
production in Ethiopia and how the ecology of coffee forests interact with political
and economic factors to shape the livelihoods of coffee farmers. This case study
based session will help students critique methods used in interdisciplinary studies as
well as grapple with the academic and political reality of undertaking such research
questions
Key Readings
Ango, et al. (2014) ‘Balancing Ecosystem Services and Disservices: Smallholder
MH
AM/MH
AM/MH
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5
6
Farmers’ Use and Management of Forest and Trees in an Agricultural Landscape in
Southwestern Ethiopia’, in Ecology and Society, 19(1): 30.
Berhanu and Poulton (2014) ‘The Political Economy of Agricultural Extension Policy in
Ethiopia: Economic Growth and Political Control’, in Development Policy Review,
32(S2): s199-s216.
Classen, et al. (2014) ‘Complementary ecosystem services provided by pest predators
and pollinators increase quantity and quality of coffee yields’, in Proceedings of Royal
Society B, 281: DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.3148.
Tadesse, et al. (2014) ‘The Marginalized and Poorest in Different Communities and
Settings of Ethiopia’, in von Braun and Gatzweiler (eds.) Marginality - Addressing the
Nexus
of
Poverty,
Exclusion
and
Ecology.
Available
online:
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-7061-4_22
The modes and legitimacies of interdisciplinary research
Is “interdisciplinary research” the solution to socio-ecological problems? How do you
foster a culture of interdisciplinarity? (How) do questions of legitimacy differ in
academic research and development-project orientated research? There are few
hard and fast rules concerning the design, implementation and communication of
interdisciplinary research. This seminar explores the theoretical and practical
tensions associated with interdisciplinary socio-ecological research in development
setting using the ESPA ECOLIMITS project as a case study.
Key Readings
Barry (2008) ‘Logics of interdisciplinarity’, in Economy and Society, 37: 20-49.
Castree, et al. (2014) ‘Changing the intellectual climate’, in Nature climate change, 4,
763–768.
Buscher (2014) ‘Selling Success: Constructing Value in Conservation and
Development’, in World Development, 57 79-90.
Caldas, et al. (2015) ‘Opinion: Endogenizing culture in sustainability science research
and policy’, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112: 8157-8159.
Lowe, et al. (2009) ‘Ecology and the social sciences’, in Journal of Applied Ecology, 46:
297-305.
Student Presentations
AM/MH
AM/MH
Teaching Staff
Dr Alex Morel is a post-doctoral researcher on the recently launched ECOLIMITS Ecosystem Services for
Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) project (www.ecolimits.org). This project involves monitoring and modeling
ecosystem service provision of intact forest and cocoa-dominated or coffee-dominated production systems
for neighbouring communities. She completed her MSc and DPhil through Oxford's Environmental Change
Institute, with theses on food security, biofuels and the carbon balance of commodity production (e.g. palm
oil) in India and Malaysia respectively. During a two year fellowship at Columbia's Earth Institute she
coordinated an expert review of the main drivers of global environmental change and worked in Haiti
mapping human-environment coupled vulnerability using household surveys and remote sensing analysis.
Previous to her most recent project she has worked on the implementation of a REDD+ project in Bale
Mountain, Ethiopia and an analysis of cloud frequency and initiations relative to forest cover over Ghana.
Dr Mark Hirons is a post-doctoral researcher working on the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation
(ESPA) ECOLIMITS project. This interdisciplinary project investigates the linkages between ecosystem service
provision and the multiple dimensions of poverty in coffee- and cocoa-dominated agricultural settings,
focusing on Ethiopia and Ghana respectively. Previously, Mark completed his PhD at the University of
Reading which examined land-use conflicts between mining and forests in Ghana.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|59
Energy Policy
Elective Leader: Dr Nick Eyre
Elective Rationale
Supply and use of energy is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore energy
policy is a critical component of any mitigation strategy. However, energy policy has other goals and
historically these have been at least as important as environmental objectives to Governments and many
other stakeholders. These multiple objectives form the political and institutional context in which national
energy and carbon mitigation policies are determined.
The elective is designed to focus on the specifics of national energy policies, rather than the broader issues
covered in the Energy and Environment elective, and to build on the ECM Climate and Energy modules.
The elective will consist of four 2-hour tutorials described below. It will start with the principal objectives of
energy policy and how delivery of those has developed since the 1970s. It will go on explore the challenges
to energy policy that are implied by the need to deliver radical reductions in carbon emissions from the
energy system. There will be a focus on the new policy instruments being used and considered, including
carbon pricing and various forms of support for renewable energy and energy efficiency. It will end with a
session on future policy challenges.
Teaching Approach
Two non-assessed pieces of work will be given during the course. One will be an essay on a specific topic
(suggested length 1500-2000 words), where the task will be to outline the key ideas, problems and
approaches, based on your knowledge and reading, and the tutorials. The other will be a short policy brief
designed to test ability to summarise key arguments for a non-academic audience.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
Energy policy – objectives and history
Governance and national policy. Why Governments intervene in energy markets.
Energy policy priorities - economic, social, industrial and environmental – and key
concepts. The origins of modern policy – the energy crises and liberalisation. Current
energy trends and their implications.
Smil, V. (2006) Energy at the crossroads. Presentation at the Global science forum
conference
on
Scientific
challenges
for
energy
research:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/oecd.pdf
International Energy Agency (2005) Lessons from Liberalised Electricity markets:
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/energy/lessons-from-liberalised-electricitymarkets_9789264109605-en
Energy policy – current issues and problems
The rise of renewables and demand side change. Weaknesses in the liberalized market
model. The low carbon transition. Qualitative approaches: lock-in and transitions theory.
Policy and politics - tools for policy-making theory and practice. Quantitative
approaches: electricity, heat and transport. Low carbon energy policy by sector.
Brohe, A. Eyre, N. and Howarth, N. (2009) Carbon Markets – An International Business
Guide, Earthscan.Unruh, G. (2000) ‘Understanding carbon lock-in’, in Energy Policy, 28
817-830.
International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives. Scenarios and Strategies
to 2050: http://www.iea.org/techno/etp/etp10/English.pdf
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3
4
Energy policy for a low carbon world
Low carbon energy policy instruments. Carbon pricing – taxes and trading. Support for
innovation- renewable energy policy: quantity and price instruments. Reform of
electricity markets. Energy efficiency.
Eyre, N. (2013) ‘Energy saving in energy market reform—The feed-in tariffs option’, in
Energy Policy, 52, 190-198.Mitchell, C., Bauknecht, D. et al. (2006) Effectiveness through
risk reduction: a comparison of the renewable obligation in England and Wales and the
feed-in system in Germany’, in Energy Policy, 34(3): 297-305.
UK
electricity
market
reform,
IET
briefing:
http://www.theiet.org/factfiles/energy/market-reform-page.cfm
Future Challenges: Intermittency, demand and storage
Future challenges – investment, innovation and engagement. Intermittency as a key
issues. System balancing and energy storage. The demand side: energy efficiency,
demand response and electrification. Different approaches to demand. Citizen
engagement.
Darby, S.J. (2012) ‘Load management at home: advantages and drawbacks of some
‘active demand side' options. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers,
Part A’, in Journal of Power and Energy.
Jackson, T. (2004) ‘Motivating Sustainable Consumption. A review of evidence on
consumer behaviour and behavioural change’, in Report to the Sustainable Development
Research Network. Mai, T., Sandor, D., Wiser, R. and Schneider, T. (2012) ‘Renewable
Electricity Futures Study. Executive Summary’, in National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL), Golden, CO.
Introductory Readings
Lovins, A.B. and Rocky Mountain Institute (2011) Reinventing Fire, Chelsea Green Publishing:
http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire
Scrase, I. and MacKerron, G. (2009) Energy for the Future – a New Agenda, Palgrave.
Stern, N. (2006) The Economics of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm
(especially chapters 15-17).
Willis, R. and Eyre, N. (2011) Demanding less: why we need a new politics of energy:
http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Publications/reports/demanding_less_web_spreads.pdf
Teaching staff
Nick Eyre leads the Lower Carbon Futures Programme in the Environmental Change Institute and is Jackson
Senior Research Fellow in Energy at Oriel College. He is a Co-Director of both the UK Energy Research Centre
and the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy. He holds an MA in Physics and a DPhil
in Nuclear Physics from the University of Oxford. He has been a researcher on energy use issues for 25 years
and was previously Head of Policy and Director of Strategy at the Energy Saving Trust in London. He
participated in analytical work for two UK Energy White Papers, leading work on energy efficiency policy and
long term energy scenarios. He has published over 100 papers, largely on energy and its environmental
implications. He was a Lead Author for the IPCC 5th Assessment report. His current research interests focus
on
the
policy
needs
of
the
transition
to
a
low
carbon
society
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|61
Environment and Development: Trade-offs or win-wins?
Elective Leader: Dr Camilla Toulmin
Elective Rationale
It is now widely recognized that we live in the Anthropocene era. The cumulative pressures on the earth’s
resources and services are pushing the system beyond the boundaries, at both local and global levels. This
elective will take four systems to explore the current status of resources, demand pressures, management
and institutional challenges, and assessment of win-wins vs trade-offs. These systems are: Drylands, Forests,
Cities, and Energy systems. Drawing particularly on the work and insights of IIED and partners, and the
importance of local agency and action, it will explore the role of ideas, interests and politics in explaining
patterns of resource use, conservation and degradation. It will review the space for trade-offs and win-wins
between incomes and livelihoods on the one hand, and sustainable resource use on the other. For each of
these resource systems, it will assess the significance of international frameworks, such as the global SDG
project, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Convention to Combat Desertification in reframing how these resource systems are used.
Teaching Approach
The course will be taught over four weeks in 2 hour sessions. Each session will focus on a few key papers or
book chapters on the system in question, drawing on specific case-studies, and set within the larger context
of sustainable development at global level. The assessment for the course will be an essay of no more than
4000 words on one of the systems addressed by the course, and/or the inter-linkages between these
systems and planetary boundaries. Essays are due at the start of the following term.
Elective Outline
Session Description
1
2
Drylands
Drylands are a large part of our global heritage, in terms of the crops and livestock we’ve drawn
from them, and practices leant from coping with water-short livelihood systems. At the heart of
recent research and practice in dryland environments is an understanding that variability in the
drylands is a defining trait: a structural difference rather than a structural limitation. Farmers and
herders engage with this variability, with those capable of managing the risk it involves being the
most productive and reaping the highest returns. Much of the global narrative continues to
portray drylands as in crisis, rather than recognising that policy and practice need updating to
reflect this new thinking. Can this narrative be shifted, and how?
Forests
Decisions about forest governance and resource tenure – or who can use what resources of the
land for how long, and under what conditions – are among the most critical for forests and
livelihoods in many contexts. As tenure systems increasingly face stress, with growing
populations requiring food security, and with environmental degradation and climate change
reducing the availability of land and forests, the governance of tenure becomes ever more
crucial in determining whether and how people are able to acquire rights to use and control
these lands and forests, along with the associated responsibilities. But who makes the rules, how
and for whose benefit? Will global carbon prices help improve forest governance, or accelerate
the resource grab?
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3
Cities
Many of the more common international claims about urbanisation are wrong: Africa is not the
fastest urbanising continent (Asia is); the rate of urbanisation in low-income countries is not
unprecedented or accelerating (indeed it has been falling for decades now); megacities are not
becoming the predominant urban form; and urbanisation is not the primary driver of urban land
expansion. Most importantly, we are not facing an urban explosion that needs to be restrained,
but the latter part of an urban transition that needs to be steered. Attempts to exclude lowincome populations from gaining access to urban benefits can be very harmful and inequitable,
but inclusive urbanisation requires more than just an open-door policy. Environmentally, there
are advantages to be gained from urban agglomeration and compact urban forms, but some of
the most important urban advantages require urban infrastructure, policies and planning that
support the transition to more resilient, healthy and sustainable cities. How can the cities being
built today offer a climate resilient, and inclusive model for the future?
4
Energy
Energy is at the heart of our economic systems. Global energy use has grown by more than 50%
since 1990, and must keep growing to support economic development in middle and low income
countries. But increasing climate risks demand a shift to low carbon sources. How can the next
wave of energy infrastructure help build more resilient, flexible energy systems that avoid lock-in
to high greenhouse gas emissions? What combination of public policy and private investment is
needed to achieve the transition to a low carbon future in all parts of the world?
What combination of technical, institutional, economic and political barriers lie in the way?
What role will ordinary people play in energy systems of the future? At IIED, we asked leading
energy thinkers for their views. Opinions vary: some want to see a future where citizens produce,
control or profit more from local energy resources; for others, companies and governments are
likely to remain in the driving seat, with people acting as passive consumers. A point of
convergence is that energy solutions, however delivered, need to be more ‘people-centred': they
need to create jobs, incentivise users to be efficient, be accountable to customers, and promote
off-grid and ‘bottom-up’ service design for poor communities.
Introductory Readings
Behnke, R. Scoones, I. and Kerven, C. (1993) Range ecology at disequilibrium: New models of natural
variability and pastoral adaptation in African savannahs, ODI, London.
Best, S. (2015) Demanding supply. Putting ordinary citizens at the heart of future energy systems, Issue Paper,
IIED, London.
Hesse, C. et al. (2013) Managing the boom and bust: Supporting climate resilient livelihoods in the Sahel, IIED,
London.
Kratli, S. (2015) Valuing variability. New perspectives on climate resilient drylands development. IIED, London.
Mayers, J. et al. (2013) Improving governance of forest tenure: a practical guide, FAO, Rome.
Mayers, J. (2015) The dragon and the giraffe: China in Africa’s forests, Briefing IIED, London.
McGranahan, G. and Satterthwaite, D. (2014) Urbanisation concepts and trends, IIED London.
McGranahan, G. and Martine, G. (201X) Urban growth in emerging economies: lessons from the BRICS.,
Routledge.
Mitlin, D. and Satterthwaite, D. (2012) Urban poverty in the global South: Scale and nature, Routledge,
London.
Mortimore, M. (2009) Dryland opportunities. A new paradigm for people ecosystems and development, IUCN,
Gland.
New Climate Economy (2014) ‘Global Commission on the economy and climate’, in Better growth: better
climate, WRI, Washington DC.
Sachs, J. (2015) The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia University Press, New York.
Satterthwaite, D. and Mitlin, D. (2013) Reducing urban poverty in the global South, Routledge, London.
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Steffen, W. et al. (2015) ‘Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet’, in
Science, Vol. 347 no. 6223.
Toulmin, C. and Brock, K. (2015 forthcoming) ‘Desertification in the Sahel: Local Practice meets Global
Narrative’, in Behnke, R. and Mortimore, M. (eds.) Re-thinking desertification, Elsevier, Germany.
‘Towards resilience and transformation for cities’, in Environment and Urbanisation (vol. 25, no. 2, 2013).
Teaching Staff
Dr Camilla Toulmin is a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development based
in London. (IIED). An economist by training, she has worked mainly in Africa on agriculture, land tenure,
climate and livelihoods. This has combined field research, policy analysis and advocacy. Her work has aimed
at understanding how environmental, economic and political forces impact on people’s lives, and how policy
reform can bring real change on the ground. She has a particular interest in supporting policy frameworks
which recognise and enable the knowledge, actions and agency of local actors, in drylands, forests and cities.
MSc Elective Handbook 2015/16|64
Global Environmental Change and Food Systems
Elective Leader: Dr John Ingram
Teaching Staff: Dr John Ingram, Dr Monika Zurek, Dr Tara Garnett and Dr Joost Vervoort
Elective Rationale
Food security is a major national and international issue for both science and policy. It has been driven in
recent years by the realization of the need to substantially increase global food supply to feed anticipated
world demand. Figures quoted of 70% by 2050 do not however take into account increases in food system
efficiency, notably reducing waste at all stages of the ‘food chain’, including changing diets. Considerable
increases in food production will however be needed, and this will be complicated by both climate change
and depleting natural resources. Food security is however also determined by a host of non-production
factors across economic, political, social, geographic, and ecological realms. Analysing food security from a
“food systems” perspective helps to better understand why food insecurity emerges, and identify food
adaptation options for enhancing food security which are more environmentally benign.
In this Elective we will discuss the drivers that influence food security and how these interact. Focussing
on food systems we will cover (i) the interactions with global environmental change and the options for
mitigating deleterious aspects of food system activities; (ii) how policy d evelopment and resource
planning can be helped by discussing them within the context of a range of plausible futures (scenarios);
(iii) the notion of more sustainable, healthy diets; and (v) how climate change is threatening food
security and the limits of adaptation.
Teaching Approach
Building on an overview lecture to all MSc students by John Ingram on food security, food systems and
general environmental issues (as part of the “Welcome to the Anthropocene” introduction week in October
2015) the Elective will be taught over four weeks in four 2-hour sessions in February/March 2015. It will be
supported by a core reading list. Each session will begin with a 40-60 minute lecture, and the rest of each
session will be run as a discussion of the associated core readings which will be posted in advance on the
WebLearn site. Students who wish to be assessed must submit an essay of no more than 4000 words on a
topic that is agreed with John Ingram (who has responsibility for co-marking all essays). This essay is due at
the start of Trinity term. There will also be the chance to submit a ‘practice’ essay in Hilary term of 2000
words on a topic set by John Ingram.
Elective Outline
Session Description
1
Food security, food systems and environmental change
This session will introduce the notion of food systems and highlight the range of
ways our food system activities contribute to crossing the ‘planetary boundaries’
including biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles and fresh water resources. The session
will then introduce some of the impacts of crossing these boundaries for food
security, including introducing the ways climate change impacts crop production. In
addition to impacts of climate change on production, extreme weather events
disrupt food storage and distribution systems, food safety and affect consumption
patterns and food waste.
Leader
JI
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2
3
4
Adaption in Food Systems
This session will introduce the range of food system actors and their motives and
objectives. It will then introduce an overview of possible adaptation and mitigation
options within the system and the role of these actors in their implementation,
drawing on examples from arable land use systems in the tropics. The session will
include a workshop in which the students will derive food system sustainability
metrics to determine the effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation options while
capturing the world views of the various actors.
Sustainable diets for 9-10 billion people
Achieving food security will require action on demand and governance, as
well as on supply. The session will cover options for reducing emissions,
considering both technological and behavioural options; the relationship
between GHG mitigation objectives and other social and ethical goals (particularly
nutrition and animal welfare); the policy context and options. Special attention
will be placed on how we might move towards health sustainable diets the issue
of meat consumption.
Scenarios for food system policy development and planning
This session will introduce the concept of scenarios, and discuss their value in food
system policy and resource use planning.. A multi-regional case study will be
presented. Students will then engage in a workshop exercise to develop their own
sets of scenarios based on major questions (unknowns) that have emerged from
previous sessions.
MZ
TG
JV
Introductory Readings
Elliott, J., Deryng, D., Müller, C., Frieler, K., Konzmann, M., Gerten, D. et al. (2014) ‘Constraints and potentials
of future irrigation water availability on agricultural production under climate change’, in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 111: 3239-3244.
FAO, IFAD and WFP (2013) The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014. Strengthening the enabling
environment for food security and nutrition, Rome.
Foley, J.A. et al. (2011) ‘Solutions for a cultivated planet’, in Nature, 478, 337-342.
Garnett, T. (2011) ‘Where are the best opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the food
system (including the food chain)?’, in Food Policy, 36, Supplement 1, S23-S32.
Garnett, T., Mathewson, S., Angelides, P. and Borthwick, F. (2015) ‘Policies and actions to shift eating
patterns: What works? A review of the evidence of the effectiveness of interventions aimed at shifting
diets in more sustainable and healthy directions’, in Food Climate Research Network and Chatham
House, University of Oxford.
Global Food Security Programme (2015) ‘Extreme weather and resilience of the global food system’, in Final
Project Report from the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience.
IFPRI (2014) ‘Global nutrition report 2014: Actions and accountability to accelerate the world's progress on
nutrition’, in Global Nutrition Report, Washington DC.
Ingram, J. (2011) ‘A food systems approach to researching food security and its interactions with global
environmental change’, in Food Security, 3, 417-431.
Ingram, J.S.I. et al. (2013) ‘Priority research questions for the UK food system’, in Food Security, 5, 617-636.
Porter, J.R., Xie, L., Challinor, A.J., Cochrane, K., Howden, S.M., Iqbal, M.M. et al. (2014) ‘IPCC Chapter 7’, in
Food Security and Food Production Systems, Cambridge University Press.
Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J. and Befort, B.L. (2011) ‘Global food demand and the sustainable intensification
of agriculture’, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 20260-20264.
Tilman, D. and Clark, M. (2014) ‘Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health’, in Nature,
515: 518-522.
Vermeulen S.J., Campbell, B.M. and Ingram, J.S.I. (2012) ‘Climate change and food systems’, in Annual
Review of Environment and Resources, 37, 195-222.
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Vervoort, J. et al. (2014) ‘Challenges to scenario-guided adaptive action on food security under climate
change’, in Global Environmental Change. In Press; available on line.
Teaching Staff
Dr John Ingram was Executive Officer for the 10-year, international project ‘Global Environmental Change
and Food Systems’ (GECAFS), based in ECI. He was then ‘Food Security Leader’ for the UK’s Natural
Environment Research Council from 2011-13 before joining ECI in May 2013 to establish ECI’s ‘Food Systems
Programme’. He has published on a wide range of topics ranging from soil organic matter dynamics to food
security issues and his current activities include promoting, coordinating and integrating international
research related to the interactions between global environmental change and food security, as researched
through analysis of food systems.
Dr Tara Garnett’s work focuses on the the food system’s contribution to GHG emissions and the options for
emissions reduction, focusing both on production and consumption side (dietary) changes. She is particularly
interested in the relationship between emissions reduction objectives and other socio-ethical concerns
including human nutrition, livelihoods, and animal welfare. Much of her focus is on livestock, since this
represents a nodal point where many of these issues converge. In addition Tara runs Food Climate Research
Network a network of over 2000 individuals, from across disciplines and sectors and from over 30 countries
worldwide who share a common interest in food system sustainability.
Dr Joost Vervoort has a background in social-ecological systems research. Since 2011, he is the Scenarios
Officer for the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security at the
University of Oxford, which entails driving multi-stakeholder scenario development for the future of food
security, livelihoods and environments for East Africa, West Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, Latin
America. Using scenarios, CCAFS is working extensively with a wide range of regional actors to guide policy,
investment and institutional change.
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Politics of Oil and Gas
Elective Leaders: Dr Kärg Kama and Dr Caitlin McElroy
Elective Rationale
The importance of oil and gas to contemporary politics and international relations seems clear enough. It is
widely recognized that oil and gas play a critical part in the politics of both producing and consuming states,
yet more sophisticated accounts of the relation between hydrocarbon extraction and politics have only
recently been published in human geography. While there is an established literature on the existence of the
‘resource curse’, which is said to blight the political and economic life of many oil and gas producing states,
other perspectives from notable geographical studies are starting to expand the discourse. This literature
does so through both its use of theory and attention to new subjects such as the operations of oil and gas
companies, the possibility and implications of global resource scarcity, and the politics of hydrocarbon
extraction in particular regions, including the Middle East, the Gulf of Guinea and the United States. One aim
of this course is to enable students to gain a critical overview of the existing literature on the politics of oil
and gas, highlighting where future research is needed. A second aim is to consider what empirical and
conceptual difficulties still need to be addressed if we are to develop a better understanding of the political
geographies of oil and gas and extractive industries more generally.
Teaching Approach
The course will be taught over six weeks in 90 minute sessions. Each session will focus on a few key papers
or book chapters on the politics of oil and gas. We will normally begin with an introduction to the week’s
topic by one of the course tutors, followed by a discussion of the week’s papers, which all students will be
expected to read. Each student will also submit two pieces of practice work (over the course of the term),
relating to the topics discussed in the course. These pieces are designed as an opportunity to practice key
analytical skills essential to the final assessed elective essay. You will have the opportunity to discuss these
pieces individually with the course tutors. The assessment for the course will be an essay of no more than
4000 words on a topic related to the course themes, to be agreed with the elective leaders. Essays are due
at the start of the following term.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
3
Description
Leader
Oil, Gas and Politics
KK/CM
In the first session we consider how the relation between oil, gas and politics has
been understood by geographers and social scientists. We discuss, in particular, the
relations of resource extraction to conflict, governance and knowledge production,
and provide an overview of recent developments in the field.
Reserves, Resources and Futures
KK
One extremely influential account of oil argues that we are now entering a period of
‘peak oil’, following which oil production will inevitably decline. In this session we
interrogate the claims of both the supporters and opponents of the peak oil thesis,
and examine recent attempts to rethink the question of the finitude of oil and other
non-renewable natural resources.
The Resource Curse
CM
According to many economists and political scientists there is a clear correlation
between the location of natural resource wealth - including oil and gas - and the
prevalence of violent conflict, corruption and inequality. In this session we examine
the claim that the presence of oil and gas resources can be a curse rather than a
blessing for the population of producer states, and assess the value of ‘transparency’
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and mechanisms of managing resource wealth as solutions to the problem of the
‘resource curse’.
4
5
6
Extractive Enclaves
Recent empirical studies by geographers and anthropologists have been particularly
concerned with the formation of specific enclaves and zones of extraction in the
producer states, and the relation between these localities and wider national and
transnational spaces of governance. We discuss some notable analyses of extractive
politics in West Africa and their insights for ‘new resource geographies’
Pipeline Politics
The location and construction of pipelines has become increasingly central to the
(geo)politics of oil and gas between nation states and within affected communities.
Here we consider a number of important geographical analyses of pipeline politics,
including Andrew Barry’s recent book on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
Carbon Economy and Democracy
In the last session we consider the ways in which oil and gas are entangled in the
political and economic life of the consuming states. We examine, in particular,
Matthew Huber’s historical analysis of oil addiction in the USA and Timothy Mitchell’s
conceptualization of ‘carbon democracy’.
CM
KK
KK
Introductory Readings
Appel, H., Mason, A. and Watts, M. (2015) Subterranean Estates, Ithaca: Cornell University Press
(Introduction).
Bridge, G. and Le Billon, P. (2013) Oil, Polity, Cambridge.
Le Billon, P. (2012) Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources, Hurst & Co, London
(chapters 1 and 3).
Mitchell, T. (2009) ‘Carbon Democracy’, in Economy and Society, 38, 3, 399-432.
Teaching Staff
Dr Kärg Kama studies recent changes in the science and technology of resource extraction and their effects
on environmental politics. She is currently publishing her DPhil research on unconventional oil development,
which focused on oil shale industries in the EU, USA and Jordan, while developing a new project on shale gas.
She is a research fellow in the department and St Anne’s College.
Dr Caitlin McElroy conducts research on the corporate social responsibility and environmental management
of extractive firms and the distribution of resource wealth. Her DPhil concerned the use of corporate
foundations in the mining industry and involved fieldwork in South Africa, Namibia, and Chile. Currently she
is developing a research program: Sharing Resource Prosperity and has been conducting preliminary
fieldwork in Mongolia. She is currently a research fellow with the Smith School of Enterprise and the
Environment.
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Rewilding and Its Place in Future Conservation Strategies
Elective Leader: Dr Keith Kirby
Elective Rationale
‘Rewilding’ has emerged as a widely discussed concept in conservation circles from its first appearance only
about 20 years ago. It has been promoted as an ambitious alternative to current approaches to nature
conservation. However the growing interest in popular writing, comment and debate risks outstripping
scientific research and lessons from conservation practice.
A variety of projects (particularly in Europe, North America and on tropical islands) have been labelled as
‘rewilding’. These illustrate the scientific and management challenges associated with trying to
reduce/reverse the impact of present and past human interventions through the restoration of species and
ecological processes. Frequently there is an implicit (if not explicit) assumption that there will be gains in
biodiversity. However how does ‘rewilding’ differ from other approaches such as habitat restoration, species
re-introduction programmes, or landscape-scale conservation; what, if anything, is new about it: and does it
replace or complement 'traditional conservation’?
‘Rewilding’ has also attracted criticism, so taking it forward risks generating opposition that could spill over
into opposition to conservation programmes more generally. Are there ways of developing rewilding
agendas – if that is deemed desirable – so as to minimise these risks?
Teaching Approach
The elective is structured as four two-hour sessions.
The first and last will comprise of a lecture followed by discussion, partly in small groups and partly all
students together. Introductory texts for these will have been listed and students will be assumed to have
read at least some of them beforehand in order to contribute to the discussion.
The middle two sessions will consist largely of presentations from the students, followed by feedback from
lecturer and the other students. For session 2 each student will work independently each looking at
different ‘rewilding project’ (in a broad sense). Some starter references will be given but the student will
then be expected to research further. For session 3 the students will be expected to work in groups to
present arguments for and against the case for re-introducing wolves to Scotland as part of a rewilding
scheme.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
The introductory lecture will explore the origin of the term rewilding and various ways in which it
has been interpreted and developed. It will cover the way that different ‘baselines’ for rewilding
have emerged and some of the criticisms of the approach.
In the subsequent discussion we will also explore why and how it has caught the imagination of
the public and conservation community and some of the ways in which rewilding differs from
other approaches to conservation.
Key Readings
Caro, T. and Sherman, P. (2009) ‘Rewilding can cause rather than solve ecological problems’, in
Nature, 462.
Donlan, C.J., Berger, J., Bock, C.E., Bock, J.H., Burney, D.A. et al. (2006) ‘Pleistocene rewilding: An
optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation’, in American Naturalist, 168:660-81.
Supplementary readings
Donlan, J. (2005) ‘Re-wilding North America’, in Nature, 436:913-4.
Hodder, K.H., Buckland, P.C., Kirby, K.J. and Bullock, J.M. (2009) ‘Can the pre-Neolithic provide
suitable models for re-wilding the landscape in Britain?’, in British Wildlife, 20 (supplement):4-15.
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Vera, F.W.M. (2009) ‘Large-scale nature development - the Oostvaardersplassen’, in British
Wildlife, 20 (supplement): 28-38.
Students will be expected to have researched beforehand two contrasting examples of 'rewilding'
projects (which may be those listed below or suggestions from the students themselves) to test
the extent to which the concepts discussed in Session 1 have been applied in practice. Each
student will be expected to produce a 750 word summary of one of the pair of projects studied
and to make a five minute presentation on this (feedback will be given). Possible examples
include:
Key Readings
1. Yellowstone Wolf re-introduction
Mech D. (2012) ‘Is science in danger of sanctifying the wolf?’, in Biol Conserv, 150:143-9.
Ripple, W.J. and Beschta, R.L. (2012) ‘Trophic cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after
wolf reintroduction’, in Biol Conserv, 145:205-13.
2. Giant tortoise re-introductions
Gibbs, J.P., Hunter, E.A., Shoemaker, K.T., Tapia, W.H. and Cayot, L.J. (2014) ‘Demographic
outcomes and ecosystem implications of giant tortoise reintroduction to Española Island,
Galapagos’, in PLoS ONE, 9.
Griffiths, C.J., Jones, C.G., Hansen, D.M., Puttoo, M., Tatayah, R.V. et al. (2010) ‘The Use of Extant
Non-Indigenous Tortoises as a Restoration Tool to Replace Extinct Ecosystem Engineers’, in
Restoration Ecology, 18:1-7.
Hansen, D.M., Donlan, C.J., Griffiths, C.J. and Campbell, K.J. (2010) ‘Ecological history and latent
conservation potential: large and giant tortoises as a model for taxon substitutions’, in Ecography,
33:272-84.
3. Pleistocene Park
Zimov, S.A. (2005) ‘Pleistocene park: Return of the mammoth's ecosystem’, in Science, 308:796-8.
Zimov, S.A., Zimov, N.S., Tikhonov, A.N. and Chapin, F.S. (2012) ‘Mammoth steppe: a highproductivity phenomenon’, in Quaternary Sci Rev, 57:26-45.
4. Oostvaardersplassen
Lorimer, J. and Driessen, C. (2014) ‘Wild experiments at the Oostvaardersplassen: rethinking
environmentalism in the Anthropocene’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
169-81.
Vera, F.W.M. (2009) ‘Large-scale nature development - the Oostvaardersplassen’, in British
Wildlife 20, (supplement): 28-38.
5. Knepp Castle Estate
See http://www.knepp.co.uk/ for overall introduction.
Greenaway, T. (2013) Knepp Wildland Project Annual Biodiversity report. Available at:
http://www.knepp.uk/Other_docs/surveys/Monitoring_reports_2013/Final%20Knepp%20Monito
ring%20Update%202013.pdf
6. Rat eradication on islands to promote bird nesting (e.g. recently on South Georgia)
Howald, G., Donlan, C.J., Galván, J.P., Russell, J.C., Parkes, J., Samaniego, A., Wang, Y., Veitch, D.,
Genovesi, P., Pascal, M., Saunders, A. and Tershy, B. (2007) ‘Invasive Rodent Eradication on
Islands’, in Conservation Biology, 21, 1258-1268.
Mulder, C.H., Grant-Hoffman, M.N., Towns, D., Bellingham, P., Wardle, D., Durrett, M., Fukami, T.
and Bonner, K. (2009) ‘Direct and indirect effects of rats: does rat eradication restore ecosystem
functioning of New Zealand seabird islands?’, in Biological Invasions, 11, 1671-1688.
7. Rewilding Europe Initiative
Helmer, W., Saavedra, D., Sylvén, M. and Schepers, F. (2015) ‘Rewilding Europe: A New Strategy
for an Old Continent’, in Perieira, H.M. and Navarro, L.M. (eds.) Rewilding European Landscapes,
Springer International Publishing:
http://www.rewildingeurope.com/
8. Urban wilderness
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4
Diemer, M., Held, M. and Hofmeister, S. (2003) ‘Urban wilderness in Central Europe’, in
International Journal of Wilderness, 9, 7-11. Available at:
http://ijw.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/04/Vol-09.No-3.Dec-03small.pdf
This session will use the specific but hypothetical case of wolf re-introduction in Scotland to
explore the interactions between different groups of interests and people in rewilding proposals.
Students will be asked, as small groups, to explore the issues beforehand such as:
 What are the ecological/conservation arguments for/against;
 What are the practical issues (including legislation) to be addressed;
 What are likely reactions from different constituencies (farmers, ramblers, urban public,
politicians)?
 What can be learnt from experience of wolf re-introduction/recolonisation elsewhere in
Europe and from UK reintroduction of beaver, wild boar, red kite, sea eagle?
Each student will be expected to produce a 750 word summary of the case as from a different
constituency ‘expert witness’ and to make a 5 minute presentation on this during the session
(feedback will be given).
Key Readings
Arts, K., Fischer, A. and Van Der Wal, R. (2012) ‘Common stories of reintroduction: A discourse
analysis of documents supporting animal reintroductions to Scotland’, in Land Use Policy, 29, 911920.
Nilsen, E.B., Milner-Gulland, E., Schofield, L., Mysterud, A., Stenseth, N.C. and Coulson, T. (2007)
‘Wolf reintroduction to Scotland: public attitudes and consequences for red deer management’,
in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274, 995-1003.
Manning, A.D., Gordon, I.J. and Ripple, W.J. (2009) ‘Restoring landscapes of fear with wolves in
the Scottish Highlands’, in Biol Conserv, 142:2314-21.
Wilson, C.J. (2004) ‘Could we live with reintroduced large carnivores in the UK?’, in Mammal
Review, 34, 211-232.
The final session will bring together elements from the earlier sessions in a lecture on the future
role of rewilding, considering issues such as the scale and location of possible future projects; the
degree to which these might be active rather than passive (e.g. land abandonment); how far
processes such as large scale fires or flooding can be restored as well as species; how the success
of rewilding projects can be judged and monitored?
This will be followed by a final discussion session to allow students to explore further ideas which
have emerged and to suggest how whether/how a rewilding agenda should be taken forward
Key Readings
Bowman D. (2012) ‘Conservation: Bring elephants to Australia?’, Nature, 482:30.
Jepson, P. (in press) ‘A rewilding agenda for Europe: creating a network of dynamic &
experimental reserves’, in Ecography, doi: [10.1111/ecog.01602].
Supplementary Readings
Hughes, F.M.R, Stroh, P.A., Adams, W.M., Kirby, K.J., Mountford, O. and Warrington, S. (2011)
‘Monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects: a journey rather
than a destination’, in Journal of Nature Conservation, 19, 245-253.
Pereira, H.M. and Navarro, L.M. (2015) Rewilding European landscapes, Springer, Heidelberg.
Introductory Readings
Foreman, D. (2004) Rewilding North America: a vision for conservation in the 21st century, Island Press,
Washington.
Lorimer, J., Sandom, C., Jepson, C., Doughty, C., Barua, M. and Kirby, K.J. (in press) ‘Rewilding: science,
practice and politics’, in Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 40.
Monbiot, G. (2013) Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding, Penguin Books Limited,
London.
Pereira, H.M. and Navarro, L.M. (2015) Rewilding European landscapes, Springer, Heidelberg.
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Sandom, C., Donlan, C.J., Svenning, J-C. and Hansen, D. (2013) Rewilding. Key Topics in Conservation Biology
2, John Wiley & Sons.
Taylor, P. (2005) Beyond conservation – a wildland strategy, Earthscan and BANC, London.
Teaching Staff
Dr Keith Kirby has been a visiting researcher in the Department of Plant Science since 2011. Prior to that, he
was forestry and woodland officer with Natural England (and its predecessors as the government
conservation agencies) since 1979, responsible for national and local advice on woodland conservation. He
has a particular interest in the degree to which we are/should be conserving cultural rather than natural
landscapes in Europe and in the very nature of what a ‘natural’ landscape in Europe might be like. This
question lies at the heart of much of the rewilding debate.
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The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity
Elective Leaders: Dr Erik Gomez-Baggethun
Elective Rationale
This elective covers concepts, methods and approaches in the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity and
interdisciplinary perspectives on the links between ecosystems and human well-being. A special emphasis is
made on methods and techniques for the integrated assessment of ecosystem services to support land use
and resource management decisions. Various theoretical issues and operational aspects are covered,
including the links between biodiversity and ecosystem services, debates over monetary valuation,
payments for ecosystem services schemes, and the role of public policy, community-based regulation and
market-based instruments in ecosystem services governance.
Teaching Approach
This course will be taught over four 2 hour sessions that will include lectures and debates. Case studies will
be used to relate theory to practice and the acquisition of practical skills in valuation and instrument design
will be emphasized. Students are expected to do the readings in advance and to be prepared to discuss
them.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
3
Description
Introduction to the economics of biodiversity
This session introduces ecosystem services as an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the links
between ecosystems and human well-being. The session reviews the historic development of
the conceptualization of ecosystem services and examines critical landmarks with regard to
their move from theory to practice.
Key readings
Balmford, A., Bruner, A., Cooper, P., Costanza, R., Farber, et al. (2002) ‘Economic reasons for
conserving wild nature’, in Science, 297, 950–953.
Gómez-Baggethun, E., de Groot, R., Lomas, P. and Montes, C. (2010) ‘The history of ecosystem
services in economic theory and practice: from early notions to markets and payment
schemes’, in Ecological Economics, 69: 1209-1218.
Integrated assessment of ecosystem services
Environmental science and policy increasingly demands frameworks that can integrate
ecological, social and economic information to support environmental management. This
session presents and examines a comprehensive framework and a typology for describing,
classifying and assessing in biophysical terms ecosystem functions, goods and services in a way
that is both clear and consistent.
Key readings
De Groot, R.S., Wilson, M. and Boumans, R. (2002) ‘A typology for the description, classification
and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services’, in Ecological Economics, 41(3): 393–
408.
Gómez-Baggethun, E. and Barton, D.N. (2013) ‘Classifying and valuing ecosystem services for
urban planning’, in Ecological Economics, 86: 235–245.
Methods and tools in ecosystem services valuation
The limitations of traditional economic approaches to account for the costs of biodiversity loss
is considered a main cause of environmental decline. This session reviews ecological, socio–
cultural and economic valuation methods to measure the societal importance of ecosystem
services and biodiversity.
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4
Key readings
Costanza, R., d'Arge, R., de Groot, R., Farber, S., Grasso, M., et al. (1997) ‘The value of the
world's ecosystem services and natural capital’, in Nature, 387, 253–260.
Pascual, U., Muradian, R., Brander, L., Gómez-Baggethun, E., Martín-López, B. And Verma, M.
(2010) ‘The Economics of Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity’, in Kumar, P. (ed.) The
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, Earthscan.
Contrasting views on the economics of ecosystem services
Environmental scientists are increasingly divided among those who accepted the valuing
ecosystems in money as a pragmatic choice, and those who rejected it on ethical grounds. This
session review the main arguments for and against the use of monetary valuation and market
instruments in environmental management. An introductory lecture will be followed by a
debate with the students.
Key readings
McCauley, D.J. (2006) ‘Selling out on nature’, in Nature, 443, 27–28.
Gómez-Baggethun, E. and Ruiz, M. (2011) ‘Economic valuation and the commodification of
ecosystem services’, in Progress in Physical Geography, 35: 617 - 632.
Luck, G.W., Chan, K.M.A., Eser, U., Gómez-Baggethun, E., Matzdorf, Norton, B. and Potschin,
M.B. (2012) ‘Ethical Considerations in On-ground Applications of the Ecosystem Services
Concept’, in BioScience, 62: 1020–1029.
Useful Links
The International Society for Ecological Economic: http://www.fsd.nl/esp
The Ecosystem Services Partnership: http://www.fsd.nl/esp
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: www.maweb.org/
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: http://www.teebweb.org/
The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Service: http://www.ipbes.net/
Teaching Staff
Dr Erik Gomez-Baggethun is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and a
Senior Visiting Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment at University of Oxford.
His research covers the ecology and economics of ecosystem services, fields in which he has produced about
fifty scientific publications. He serves as vice president of the European Society for Ecological Economics and
in the editorial board of several international scientific journals. Erik was lead author of the report ‘The
economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) and chapter coordinator for the CBD’s report ‘Cities and
biodiversity Outlook’ (CBO-1). He currently leads work packages in the projects Urban Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (URBES) and Operationalizing Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services (OpenNESS). He
also serves as expert for the International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
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The Forest Governance Group
Elective Leader: Dr Connie McDermott
Elective Rationale
This elective mixes class discussion and practice essays with field work and experimentation with social
media. While the emphasis of this course is on forests, the readings and discussions will encompass a range
of sectors impacting forests (including agriculture, mining and carbon trade) and the broader challenges of
multi-scale environmental governance. The class will explore a range of critical governance questions, such
as who shapes decision-making about forests and other natural resources, who benefits from those
decisions, and how governance dynamics affect on-the-ground outcomes.
Throughout the year, students are also encouraged to attend relevant Oxford Centre or Tropical Forests
(OCTF) lectures and to join the Oxford Forest Governance Group list serve to receive news of other relevant
events. To join either or both listserves please email Jane Applegarth: jane.applegarth@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Teaching Approach
The first class (mandatory) will be 1.5 hours in length and involve only students signed up for the elective. It
will begin with a round of introductions followed by a discussion of the course approach and student
requirements, and a general discussion of the concept of “governance”. The following sessions will then be
open to the wider forest governance group membership, which includes PhD students, researchers and
practitioners across campus and beyond.1 Based on past experience, class size is not likely to exceed 15
people in any one session, with possible exceptions for particularly popular presentations. The forest
governance group meetings will involve a mix of reading group meetings, presentations, as well as possible
social media inputs (involving a forest governance group blog site), and possible field assignments.
Assignments (more details to be provided on instruction sheets for Classes 1 and 4):
Individual essay: Prepare a short written essay based on the assigned readings and questions listed for Class
1 as per the instructions on the Class 1 hand out. This essay is due by class time.
Blog: Students will pair into teams. Each team will be assigned to write a blog on one of the Class 2 – 4
themes (e.g. illegal logging, REDD+ or certification) for the Oxford Forest Governance blog (I’ll send you
invitations to the blog). The blog will not be visible to the public, but if all goes well we may decide to make
all or part of it visible at the end of the course. Please have the blogs drafted in time for the class covering
your theme so that we can view and discuss the blogs in class.
Field research and App: Preparation for Class 4 will involve a field exercise, visiting an office or home supply
store. The instructions for Class 4 describe what questions to ask. Take notes to discuss in class. In addition,
jot down ideas for a new App that would address any of the challenges you notice regarding consumer
engagement with certification.
Elective Outline
Session
1
Description
Introduction to forest governance
We will begin with a round of introductions followed by a discussion of the course approach and
1
The forest governance group involves members of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests. See
http://www.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk
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2
3
4
student requirements. We'll conclude with a general discussion of ‘governance’ and the global
drivers of forest change. Please send me your written essays before this session.
Key readings
Rosenau, J.N. (1995) ‘Governance in the Twenty-first Century’, in Global Governance, 1, 13-43.
Scott, J.C. (1998) ‘Chapter 1: nature and Space’, in Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to
improve the human condition have failed, New Haven, CT ; London: Yale University Press.
(Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/scott-state.html)
Rudel, T., DeFries, R., Asner, G.P. and Laurance, W. (2009) ‘Changing drivers of deforestation and
new opportunities for conservation’, in Conservation Biology, 23, 1396-1405.
[optional] Dávalos, L.M., Holmes, J.S., Rodríguez, N. and Armenteras, D. (2014) ‘Demand for beef
is unrelated to pasture expansion in northwestern Amazonia’, in Biological Conservation, 170, 6473.
Legality
Two papers are assigned with contrasting perspectives/emphases on the promise of legality
verification as a tool to improve forest governance. This class may take the form of a debate.
Key readings
Cashore, B.W. and Stone, M.W. (2012) ‘Can legality verification rescue global forest governance?:
Analyzing the potential of public and private policy intersection to ameliorate forest challenges in
Southeast Asia’, in Forest Policy and Economics, 18, 13-22.
Lesniewska, F. and McDermott, C.L. (2014) ‘FLEGT VPAs: Laying a Pathway to Sustainability via
Legality Lessons from Ghana and Indonesia’, in Forest Policy and Economics:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2014.01.005.
REDD+ co-benefits and safeguards
Students will discuss the readings and blog.
Key readings
den Besten, J.W., Arts, B. and Verkooijen, P. (2014) ‘The evolution of REDD+: An analysis of
discursive-institutional dynamics’, in Environmental Science and Policy, 35, 40-48.
Reed, P. (2011) ‘REDD+ and the Indigenous Question: A Case Study from Ecuador’, in Forests 2,
525-549.Visseren-Hamakers, I.J., McDermott, C.L., Vijge, M.J. and Cashore, B.W. (2012) ‘Tradeoffs, co-benefits and safeguards: current debates on the breadth of REDD+’, in Current Opinion in
Environmental Sustainability 4, 646-653.
Certification
Students will discuss the reading and blog and their experiences conducting the field exercise
(see Class 4 instructions). We will also consider how other communication technologies, such as a
mobile App, might address gaps identified in consumer and stakeholder engagement with
certification.
Key readings
Auld, G., Gulbrandsen, L.H. and McDermott, C.L. (2008) ‘Certification Schemes and the Impact on
Forests and Forestry’, in Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 33, 187-211.
Newton, P., Agrawal, A. and Wollenberg, L. (2013) ‘Enhancing the sustainability of commodity
supply chains in tropical forest and agricultural landscapes’, in Global Environmental Change, 23,
1761-1772.
Teaching Staff
Dr Constance McDermott’s research examines forest governance in its many forms, including
intergovernmental forest and climate initiatives, domestic forestry institutions and policy, market-based
initiatives such as forest and green building certification, and community-based forest management. She is
interested in the integration of “vertical” (i.e. local to global) and “horizontal” (i.e. multi-stakeholder)
diversity into forestry decision-making and how dynamics of trust and power across scales and interest
groups shape environmental and social outcomes. Her research methods range from locally focused case
studies to large-scale comparative research examining cross-institutional and cross-boundary interactions.
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Her in-depth case study work has included the development of certification and community forestry in
various local communities of North and Central America and South Asia. A focus of her current research
includes the intersection of existing forest-related institutions and policies with the global climate regime,
including REDD+ and carbon certification initiatives.
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Urban Ecologies
Elective Leader: Dr Maan Barua
Elective Rationale
Urban ecologies are at the forefront of contemporary debates on nature-society relations and conservation
practice. Geographers’ understandings of urbanization as a process of urbanizing nature (Swyngedouw &
Kaika, 2014), is gaining even more traction with the advent of the so-called Anthropocene, marked by
humans becoming a planet-altering force. The adaptation of wildlife to new urban habitat, emergence of
novel ecosystems through intensified metabolism and waste, scrambled biogeographies of species through
trade and traffic, are some of the urban’s pressing promises and threats. They pose major challenges to
both conservation practice and urban planning.
In this module, we will understand key geographical and social science concepts pertaining to urban
ecologies. We will then examine how social theory might be used to dissect challenges and opportunities for
governing and conserving urban natures, particularly animals. The module will introduce five key themes
pertaining to urban ecologies: urbanization, space, metabolism, cosmopolitanism and politics. They will
then be used to interrogate questions about urban nature and its conservation. Key learnings are relevant
for theorizing nature-society relations and for building a critical approach to conservation.
Teaching Approach
The module will consist of five 2-hour sessions. They will comprise will comprise of a 1.5 hour lecture +
questions, followed by a half hour group discussion. The lectures will introduce theoretical concepts and
discuss these in light of select cases relating to urban governance and nature conservation. The module will
thus be of interest to those who seek to advance understandings of political ecology, animal and more-thanhuman geography and how these might relate to practice.
Students will be required to write two short (c.500 word) trial essays, one pertaining to a concept, the other
on an urban conservation controversy. Students opting to be assessed for the module will be required to
submit a 4,000 word essay dealing with a question agreed in advance with the elective leader.
Elective Outline
Session
Description
1
Urbanization
How is urbanization inherently about the urbanization of nature? How might we understand
this process from the viewpoint of animals? We focus on the process of urbanization and how
it affects animal ecologies, introducing key texts in political ecology and more-than-human
geography. We then outline what this might mean for conservation practice that has a
relatively poor legacy for dealing with the urban.
Key Readings
Hinchliffe, S. and Whatmore, S. (2006) ‘Living cities: Towards a politics of conviviality’, in
Science as Culture, 15, 123-138.
Swynedouw, E. and Kaika, M. (2014) 'Urban Political Ecology. Great Promises, Deadlock ... and
New Beginnings?', in Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica, 60, 459-481.
2
Urban Spaces
How might different theorizations of space contribute to our understandings of urban
governance and conservation practice? How is the politics of urban conservation inherently a
spatial practice? We explore this theme through the case of urban national parks and the
politics of enclosing the commons.
Key Readings
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5
Palmer, C. (2003) ‘Colonization, urbanization, and animals’, in Philosophy & Geography, 6, 4758.
Philo, C. (1995) ‘Animals, geography, and the city: notes on inclusions and exclusions’, in
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13, 655-681.
Rosenzweig, M.L. (2003) ‘Reconciliation ecology and the future of species diversity’, in Oryx, 37,
194-205.
Urban metabolism
How are urban ecologies constituted by metabolic flows? What kinds of natures prevail in
urban settings that are highly metabolized? We examine the concept of metabolic rift in
Marxist political ecology and appraise how it has bearings for thinking about wider
conservation practice. Case studies will illustrate thinking about commodification and its
uneven consequences for nature
Key Readings
Foster, J.B. (1999) ‘Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental
Sociology’, in American Journal of Sociology, 105, 366-405.
Heynen, N., Kaika, M. and Swyngedouw, E. (2006) ‘Urban political ecology’, in In the Nature of
Cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism, Routledge, Oxford.
Smith, N. (2007) ‘Nature as accumulation strategy’, in Socialist Register, January, 1-36.
Cosmopolitanism
What constitutes assemblages of nature in a globalized world? What new ecologies emerge
through the circulation and mobility of animals? We examine the challenges cosmopolitan
natures pose for urban governance and conservation through two case studies on invasives and
ex situ conservation.
Key Readings
Barua, M. (2013) ‘Circulating elephants: unpacking the geographies of a cosmopolitan animal’,
in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39, 559-573.Davis, M.A. et al. (2011)
‘Don't judge species on their origins’, in Nature, 474, 153-154.
Robbins, P. (2004) ‘Comparing invasive networks: cultural and political biographies of invasive
species’, in The Geographical Review, 94, 136-159.
Urban ecological politics
How is the politics of governing nature composed and contested by a number of nonhuman
inhabitants of the urban? We examine political ecologies of urban governance, with the aim of
ecologizing politics, opening up the capacity to assent or conflict to a number of actors that are
otherwise relegated by humanist approaches. We then appraise the implications for
conservation practice.
Key Readings
Hinchliffe, S., Keanes, M.B., Degen, M. and Whatmore, S. (2005) ‘Urban wild things: a
cosmopolitical experiment’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 643-658.
Marres, N. (2010) ‘Front-staging Nonhumans: Publicity as a Constraint on the Political Activity
of Things’, in Braun, B. and Whatmore, S. (eds.) Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy and
Public Life, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Introductory Readings
Braun, B. (2005) ‘Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography’, in Progress in Human
Geography, 29, 635-650.
Swyngedouw, E. and Kaika, M. (2014) 'Urban Political Ecology. Great Promises, Deadlock ... and New
Beginnings?', in Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica, 60, 459-481. Available at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/dag.155
Wolch, J. (2002) 'Anima urbis', in Progress in Human Geography, 26, 721-742.
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Teaching Staff
Dr Maan Barua is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment.
Maan’s research is focused on the politics, spatialities and governance of the living and material world,
engaging political ecology and posthumanist thought. Of particular interest are nonhuman ecologies and
processes pertaining to production, landscape and knowledge, and situations in which different ecological
epistemologies are brought into conflict. Maan’s past and ongoing research projects include work on
animals’ geographies, nonhuman labour and the economy, and postcolonial urban ecologies. He has an MSc
and DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford, and is attached to Somerville College.
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Urban Water and Wastewater
Elective Leader: Dr David W.M. Johnstone
Elective Rationale
Effective treatment and distribution of water accompanied by efficient collection and treatment of
wastewater are vital for the sustainability of the urban environment and account for most of the global
annual expenditure in the water sector. It is a capital intensive and highly energy consumptive industry
complicated by decaying assets and the need for vast expenditure on new and replacement facilities
especially in developing countries. Demographics, urbanisation and climate change have created new and
complex challenges for policy makers in this area. This elective provides students with a broad
understanding of the technologies used and of the principal issues required to be addressed in the future,
and invites debate on the challenges and the ways and means to address them. The teaching is participatory,
interdisciplinary and non-technical, with a focus on practical application of real world examples rather than
conceptual approaches. The emphasis will be on wastewater as internationally this lags behind water supply
by a considerable margin; it is also much more complex in all aspects. Basic water supply and sanitation in
urban and peri-urban slums in developing countries will be discussed to a limited extent as they are also
discussed in core modules. The elective will end with an introduction to finance.
Teaching Approach
Each seminar session will start with a lecture on the key issues covered in the recommended text with a
theme of reality rather than theory. Students will be expected to have read the recommended text and
should not be too concerned with the more mathematical/engineering descriptions; this elective is not
about detailed engineering but about technical issues that policy makers should understand. Sessions will
be interactive with students encouraged to participate in discussion.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
The elective will start with a discussion with the “ins” and “outs” of water and wastewater
treatment by examining some aspects of raw water and crude sewage characteristics and the
requirements of drinking water quality and the nature of wastewater effluents including the
control of industrial wastewaters. The session will also focus on quality measurement.
Key Readings
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and
Engineers, Third Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4, Part III, chapters 11, 13.1.
Bartram, J. and Balance, R., Water Quality Monitoring – Practical Guide to the Design and
Implementation of Freshwater. Quality Studies and Monitoring Programmes, chapters 9 and
7.4 and 7.6.
Johnstone DWM Effluent Standards (Weblearn)
By far the greatest costs of urban water are incurred in the network of pipes and apparatus
used to distribute water to the community and the system of pipes, drains and apparatus
required to collect and transfer wastewater to a place of treatment. This session will provide
a basic understanding of how distribution systems work including water balance and leakage
and also the principles and types of sewerage networks, many of which are old, decaying and
malfunctioning. The session will reflect reality and not necessarily theory.
Key Readings
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and
Engineers, Third Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4, chapter 10.2 and chapters
13.2 and 13.3.
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4
5
6
Blue Pages – (weblearn)
Duncan Mara, Low cost sewerage- (Weblearn)
http://www.decentralizedcentral.org/index.php?page_name=Introduction
This session will consider the principles of water treatment processes from basic
coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation to advanced ozone/GAC and membrane systems
including disinfection and the use of free chlorine within distribution networks. It will also
discuss the problems arising from the disposal of water treatment sludge.
Key Readings
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and
Engineers, Third Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4, chapters 10 Introduction
and 10.1.1 to 10.1.11.
A brief history of wastewater treatment will be followed by an introduction to the principles
of biological processes and the key design and operational issues surrounding various
treatment systems including activated sludge, anaerobic systems, stabilisation ponds,
wetlands and nutrient removal. Particular attention will be given to matters of concern for
policy makers including some of the many pitfalls. Advanced process systems will be
introduced as an introduction to the potential use of treated wastewater as a potential water
resource.
Key Readings
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and
Engineers, Third Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4, chapters 15, 16 and 17 do not be too concerned with process details.
UNEP-UH HABITAT Sick Water (Weblearn)
Valentina Lazarova Water Reuse (Weblearn)
The initial part of this session will briefly review wastewater sludge/biomass disposal
concentrating on the water/wastewater/energy nexus and the potential for energy recovery.
It will be supplemented by a site visit to a treatment plant late in Michaelmas Term.
The second part of the session will look at faecal sludge problems in urban and peri-urban
areas in developing countries.
Key Reading
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and
Engineers, Third Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4, chapter 21 for general
principles.
The final session will consider costs, finance and market issues over the next 30 years
considering population growth, massive potential costs, reuse, etc .
Key Readings
Baietti A. and Raymond P. (2005) Financing Water Supply and Sanitation Investments: Utilizing
Risk Mitigation Instruments to Bridge the Financing Gap.
Pretoria Workshop
Introductory Readings
Gray N.F. (2010) Water Technology; An introduction for Environmental Scientists and Engineers, Third
Edition, IWA Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85617-705-4. Only chapters listed.
UNEP –UN HABITAT Sick Water:
http://www.unep.org/pdf/SickWater_screen.pdf
Bartram, J. and Balance, R., Water Quality Monitoring – Practical Guide to the Design and Implementation of
Freshwater. Quality Studies and Monitoring Programmes, only chapters listed below:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/resourcesquality/waterqualmonitor.pdf
Baietti A. and Raymond P. (2005) Financing Water Supply and Sanitation Investments: Utilizing Risk
Mitigation Instruments to Bridge the Financing Gap.
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http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2005/04/13/000090341_200504131009
33/Rendered/PDF/320280WSS1Investments.pdf
Pretoria Workshop: How can reforming African water utilities tap local financial markets?:
http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/09/07/000334955_200909070559
46/Rendered/PDF/502560WSP0Box31ial0markets01PUBLIC1.pdf
Teaching Staff
Dr David Johnstone is a Senior Visiting Research Associate within the School of Geography and the
Environment and has over 50 years of practical experience in the water and sanitation sector in more than
30 countries, particularly in Latin America, South East Asia and the Middle East. Originally trained as a
chemist with a PhD in Physical Chemistry, he spent his early career engaged in research into wastewater
treatment processes with a sojourn into inshore oceanography. He joined Thames Water Authority soon
after its formation in 1974 as a Divisional Scientist which was followed by a period in general operational
management when he was responsible for all the utility services for a large area of the Thames basin. In
1984 he joined Sir William Halcrow and Partners as Director of Public Health Engineering working mainly
overseas. He became an independent consultant in 1992 since when he has been involved with a number of
high profile institutional and privatisation projects in the industrialising world and over an eight year period
advised on the process design, bidding and procurement of two of the largest sewage treatment works in
the world in São Paulo, Brazil. He has also worked on the strengthening of the operational and managerial
capacity of developing world water utilities and has recently been Consultant to the UN Taskforce on
Wastewater leading up to the development of Sustainable Development Goals that will replace the MDGs in
2015.
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World Inequalities
Elective Leader: Professor Danny Dorling
Elective Rationale
Inequalities have risen to the fore in recent years as a subject for debate in the social sciences. Most
commonly the interest is with the possible harmful effects of social or economic inequalities within any one
country or society. However, attention has also been increasingly focused on the extent to which
inequalities between countries may be growing or narrowing. Furthermore studies have begun to appear
concerned with gaps measured between people worldwide when, statistically, they are not grouped within
national borders. In this module we will look at the issues of inequalities worldwide at three levels: (i) what
are the implications of inequalities being high within one country as compared to another? (ii) Are
inequalities in social and economic outcomes rising or narrowing between countries worldwide? (iii) When
people are not grouped by country, are life chances narrowing or widening for the population as a world as
whole and how best are these issues discussed, theorized and presented? The inequalities being considered
will range from income and wealth (Milanovic, 2013) to education and well-being (UNICEF, 2013) to Health
(WHO, 2008).
Teaching Approach
This module will be taught over six weeks in Hilary term in six 90 minute sessions on Tuesday mornings to be
held from 9am to 10.30am of weeks three to eight. The first session will introduce the elective and divide
readings and work tasks among the students for their contributions to each of the following five sessions.
Each of the following five sessions will follow the same format of a 30 minute lecture, including time for
questions, followed by a 1 hour class discussion informed by pre-assigned class readings and led by 2 or 3
students responsible for introducing the readings. These readings will often be of empirical material and will
have an emphasis on the measurement of changes in inequalities and understanding why they are changing
as they are. Class members will be expected to be interested in dealing with the demands of the
philosophical questions that the empirical material raises and will need to be willing to read around each
subject more widely.
Each student group will be required to write up their presentations to the create a well referenced 2,000
word report, presented as a Joseph Rowntree Foundation style “Findings” (1 per group, 5 in total) by the last
day of week 9 to create a class resource that can be shared among the group. Students opting to be assessed
for this module will be required to submit a 4,000 word essay on a key issue involving one of the five
inequalities discussions in weeks four to eight. This essay will be due at the start of Trinity Term.
Elective Outline
Session
1
2
Description
Introducing key issues in studying inequalities, locally, nationally and globally
What inequalities matter? Between what groups should we measure them? And when might
measurement harm or be misleading? Inequalities between geographical groups of people are
often discussed when countries are compared, but they can also be measured between
different income and wealth groups, between social classes, between men and women; girls
and boys; or between age and ethnic groups and by many other categorizations
Inequalities in education
How many “educational life years” can children in different parts of the world expect to
experience and how does this future expectation differ from what their parents experienced?
Is it possible to look at the amount of money spent on different tiers of education, and on
boys and girls separately, or by social or ethnic classes separately, to ascertain whether
inequalities are rising or falling over time?
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4
5
6
Inequalities in assets
In 2006 the United Nations University, http://www.wider.unu.edu/ produced its first study on
The World Distribution of Household Wealth. The distribution of assets, from the most basic of
amenities to the wealth of the global super-rich is almost certainly the most unequal
distribution of all. Is it possible to compare wealth over such a wide range and, if so, can we
meaningfully track changes in global wealth/asset/poverty distributions over time?
Inequalities in income
The US sociologist, Glenn Firebaugh, came to the conclusion in 2004 that income inequalities
were falling globally. Was he correct and is this continuing and, if so, why? See: Firebaugh, G.
and Brian Goesling (2004). "Accounting for the Recent Decline in Global Income Inequality."
American Journal of Sociology 110 (September): 283-312. If this conclusion is correct what are
the implications of the estimated effects of income inequalities within countries?
Inequalities in leisure
A century ago many people thought that by now we would be living in a time of leisure, but
the extent to which people in different parts of the world are required to work for their
incomes is, in many cases rising and often more and more of the population are becoming
engaged in formally paid work. However, much of that work might not be contributing to
increasing standards of living. To what extent is leisure time (but also enforced
unemployment) distributed globally and how is that changing?
Inequalities in health
The most important inequalities of all are often said to be inequalities in health. In recent
years human average global life expectancies has risen rapidly as infant mortality has fallen. In
absolute terms death rates have fallen the most often where they were was highest to begin
with. Why is this happening now and should we be concerned with wider measures and trends
in good and poor health over and above mortality rates? Finally how are our levels of anxiety,
depression and happiness changing around the world and to what extent can such issues be
reliability addressed?
Introductory Readings
Milanovic, B. (2012) Globalization and Inequality, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, especially the introduction
which is available here:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVRES/Resources/BMilanovic_Globalization_Inequality_proofs.pdf
UNDESA (2013) Report on the World Social Situation: Inequality Matters, 31 December:
http://undesadspd.org/Publications/tabid/83/news/394/Default.aspx
UNDESA (2014) World Economic and Social Survey (and look out for the 2015 edition…):
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/archive.shtml
UNICEF (2013) Child well-being in rich countries: A comparative overview , Innocenti Report Card 11, UNICEF
Office of Research, Florence:
http://www.unicef.org.uk/Latest/Publications/Report-Card-11-Child-well-being-in-rich-countries/
World Health Organisation (2008) Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the
Social Determinants of Health, Copenhagen: WHO:
http://www.who.int/social_determinants/thecommission/finalreport/en/index.html
Teaching Staff
Professor Danny Dorling joined the School of Geography and the Environment in September 2013 to take up
the Halford Mackinder Professorship in Geography. He was previously a professor of Geography at the
University of Sheffield. He has also worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand, went to university
in Newcastle upon Tyne, and to school in Oxford.
Much of Danny's work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). With a group of colleagues he
helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His
work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. His recent books
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include, co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live and Bankrupt Britain: An
atlas of social change.
Recent sole authored books include, Injustice: Why social inequalities persist in 2010; So you think you know
about Britain and Fair Play, both in 2011; in 2012 The No-nonsense Guide to Equality, The Visualization of
Social Spatial Structure and The Population of the UK; Unequal Health, The 32 Stops and Population Ten
Billion in 2013; and All That is Solid in 2014.
Before a career in academia Danny was employed as a play-worker in children's play-schemes and in preschool education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget
this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary
President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash
victims.
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