Dr Julia Corwin and Dr Kasia Paprocki

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Environment and Development and MSc in Environmental Policy, Technology and Health (Environment and Development) (LSE and Peking University). This course is available on the MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Environmental Economics and Climate Change, MSc in Environmental Policy and Regulation, MSc in Environmental Policy, Technology and Health (Environmental Economics and Climate Change) (LSE and Peking University), MSc in Environmental Policy, Technology and Health (Environmental Policy and Regulation) (LSE and Peking University) and MSc in Urbanisation and Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The number of students that can be accommodated is limited. If the course is over-subscribed, places will be allocated at the Department’s discretion and a waiting list may be created. For further details, please contact your relevant Programme Coordinator.

This course explores key themes at the intersection of development and environmental politics. Specifically, the course is centred on the applications of political ecology, critical development studies, and materialist human geography to topics in environment and development. In exploring the complex relationships between historical dynamics of development, inequality, and the environment, it covers a range of important natural resource and environmental issues, such as climate change, conservation, waste, and environmental social movements.

In the Department of Geography and Environment, teaching will be delivered through a combination of classes/seminars, pre-recorded lectures, live online lectures, in-person lectures and other supplementary interactive live activities.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures across Michaelmas Term.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term. 

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT.

• Li, T (2007), The Will to Improve, Durham: Duke University Press.
• Robbins, P (2012), Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
• Scott, J (1991) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• West, P (2006) Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Wolford, W (2010) This Land Is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press.

Assessment path 1
Essay (100%, 6000 words) post-summer term.

Assessment path 2
Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the LT.

• Assessment Pathway one is for MSc Environment and Development students NOT registered on GY489: Dissertation.
• Assessment Pathway two is for all other students. 

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.