Dr Tim Forsyth, CON. H805

For students taking MSc Development Studies, MSc Development Management, MSc Anthropology and Development Management, MSc International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, MSc Global Politics, MSc International Relations, MSc International Relations (Research), MSc Environment and Development, MSc Population and Development, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc Health, Community and Development,  MSc Accounting, Organisations and Institutions, MSc Public Policy and Administration, MPA International Development, MSc Regulation and MSc Regulation (Research) and for those taking other MSc programmes, space permitting, with the approval of the course teacher and their own programme directors. Also available to students taking MSc International Relations or MSc International Political Economy as part of the LSE-Sciences Po Double Degree in Affairés Internationales programme. Please note that in case of over-subscription to this course priority will be given to students from the Department of International Development and its joint degrees (where their regulations permit). This course is capped at 60 students.

The course objective is to review approaches to environment and development from the viewpoints of social and political theory and their current applications in development studies and environmental policy. The course is structured to analyze the challenges of making well-informed environmental interventions in the face of poverty and vulnerability, and then seeking practical solutions to these dilemmas.  First, the course considers the nature of environmental problems within a 'development' context, and what this means for environmental science and norms as applied in developing countries. Themes include assessing environmental 'crises,' adaptation to population growth and scarcity; gender and environment; and vulnerability to 'natural' hazards;. The second part of the course considers debates about policy interventions such as common property regime theory; theories of the state and environment; community-based natural resource management and Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches; adaptation to climate change; forests; and urban environmental policy (these latter themes involve debates on multi-level, multi-actor governance involving the connections of local development and global environmental policy). This course may be taken or audited with DV415, which focuses on global environmental governance.

10 lectures (each of 1.5-hour duration) and 9 seminars (each of 1.5-hour duration) during Michaelmas Term.

One 1,500 word essay

A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first course meeting. Students are not advised to buy a single textbook for this course but to read selectively and critically from various sources. The following books might be useful introductions.

W M Adams, Green Development, Routledge, 2000; A. Agrawal, Environmentality, Duke, 2005. T Forsyth, Critical Political Ecology: the Politics of Environmental Science, Routledge, 2003; M. Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, Cambridge University Press, 2009; E Ostrom (et al), The Drama of the Commons: Understanding Common Pool Resource Management, National Academy Press, 2002; R Peet & M Watts (Eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, Routledge 2004. L Schipper and I Burton (eds) The Earthscan Reader on Adaptation to Climate Change, Earthscan, 2008.

Two-hour examination (80%) and an essay of no more than 2,000 words (20%) due on the first day of Lent Term.