BA Geography

This transdisciplinary unit will introduce students to foundational concepts in sustainability, and the role of sustainability in mitigating the ‘triple planetary crises’ of biodiversity collapse, climate change and pollution. Students will become familiar with the nine planetary boundaries (Climate change, novel entities, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, ocean acidification, biogeochemical flows, freshwater change, land system change, biosphere integrity) as the unit’s key framework, and examine the historical and structural drivers of major contemporary socio-ecological challenges. Additionally, students will critically interrogate how power dynamics underlie and exacerbate socio-ecological disintegration. Through a selection of key issues and relevant case studies spanning terrestrial and marine environments, students will imaginatively explore potential solutions to pressing socio-ecological challenges through the decolonial lens of climate justice.

• Introduce students to key concepts, issues and approaches to ‘sustainability’ and the ‘nine planetary boundaries’ framework
• Enable students to evaluate diverse and at times conflicting understandings of ‘sustainability’ amidst global efforts to mitigate major global socio-ecological crises
• Equip students to critically interrogate key systemic drivers of contemporary socio-ecological crises, and to take informed, well-considered positions within these debates
• Develop transferrable skills in academic writing and communicating ideas to non-academic audiences 

Week  Topic
1:   Course unit intro
       Intro to the ‘Nine planetary boundaries’ framework’ 
       What is sustainability? Western & other-than-Western approaches

2.  The RoundView with Joanne Tippett

3.  Climate change: causes, impacts and solutions

4. Sustainable cities: buildings and transport, consumption and waste

5.  Land use and food production

6. Oceans & marine resilience

7.  Novel entities: Plastic planet? 
     Air, water and soil pollution: Drivers, monitoring

8.  Biodiversity loss, ecosystems and rewilding

9.  Connecting the dots: Environmental justice, climate justice

10. Communicating and educating for transformative sustainability

11.  Working with/through climate anxiety: sustainable futures now  

12. Recapping the course materials and discussion.

Looking ahead: Guest session on ‘Green employability/STEAM skills’ 
 

This hybrid unit will consist of (timetable permitting): weekly asynchronous (pre-recorded) lectures and in-person 1-hour tutorials. The sessions will deploy blended and flipped teaching and learning techniques in order to enhance engagement, for instance through the use of teaching technologies like Mentimeter, pre and post-tutorial online discussion forum activities on Canvas (asynchronous), the use of multimedia tools such as YouTube and the online database Environmental Justice Atlas database for group discussion activities (synchronous and asynchronous).

Key weekly content will be covered via brief lectures interspersed between interactive activities (i.e. guided learning, discussion forums). The tutorials will be discussion-based, with group activities oriented around the week’s key readings and lecture content. Where possible, guest lectures and short field trips to pertinent locations (i.e. local sustainability initiatives, projects, events) will be incorporated in order to enhance learning. 
 

• Recognise the nine interconnected planetary boundaries and their relation to contemporary socio-ecological crises
• Define sustainability and evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches to sustainability for mitigating environmental breakdown  
• Analyse the relationships between global environmental crises of today and their historical roots in colonialism, capitalism, anthropocentrism and related systems of oppression
• Critically and imaginatively evaluate alternative futures by examining relevant case studies and community-based responses to living sustainably.   

• Appraise the evidence for different perspectives and draw well-argued conclusions
• Engage with and interpret literature from a wide range of academic disciplines
• Develop a holistic and systems-thinking perspective on socio-ecological issues 

• Synthesise evidence and identify the most important key messages
• Present material in a format accessible to a non-academic audience

• Demonstrate transdisciplinary critical and imaginative thinking 
• Develop empathy through self-reflection on how one’s own positionality shapes one’s views on key issues
• Engage and communicate effectively with key actors working in sustainability sector across a range of contexts
• Undertake both independent and collaborative work to enhance time management and problem-solving skills 
• Strengthen one’s sense of personal, professional and political agency, and responsibility as a planetary citizen

Formative Assessment Task 

1. Individual project statement

Length (word count/time) : 200 words (bullet-point plan)

How and when feedback is provided:
Written feedback by week 4

2. Project analysis (group) in connection with the University Living Lab  

Length (word count/time):
In-person* group PowerPoint presentation of case analysis & proposed solutions

* = cohort size permitting; if not, pre-recorded

How and when feedback is provided:
Verbal (tutor and peers) on week 8
Written (tutor) by week 9

Assessment Task:

This unit features a ‘sustainability praxis project’ composed of two interlinked assessments. The ‘sustainability praxis project’ will allow students to identify and analyse a sustainability challenge set by an external environmental organisation, and work to propose a creative solution to this challenge:

1- Sustainability praxis project statement (individual) - Write a Case Study Problem Statement on your selected sustainability issue and organisation.

Length:  800 words

How and when feedback is provided:
Written feedback to be provided by week 6, within 15 days of submission as per Faculty guidance.

Weighting:   40%

2- Sustainability praxis project analysis (Group) - Write a Case Study Analysis that presents and examines a creative solution to the sustainability issues or problems facing your chosen organisation, using supportive evidence.

Length: 
2,500 words (including the individual project statement and 200-word reflection on group work experience) 

How and when feedback is provided:
Written feedback to be provided by week 10, within 15 days of submission as per Faculty guidance. 

Weighting:   60%
 

Books & chapters:

• Anderson, C.R., Bruil, J., Chappell, M.J., Kiss, C. and Pimbert, M.P., 2021. Agroecology now!: Transformations towards more just and sustainable food systems. Springer Nature.
• Ferdinand, M., 2021. Decolonial ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean world. John Wiley & Sons.
• Ghosh, A. 2021. The nutmeg’s curse: Parables for a planet in crisis. John Murray.
• Hodgson, A., 2019. Systems thinking for a turbulent world: A search for new perspectives. Routledge.
• Kimmerer, R., 2013. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.
• Sultana, F. ed., 2024. Confronting climate coloniality: Decolonizing pathways for climate justice. Taylor & Francis.
• Solnit, R. and Young-Lutunatabua, T. eds., 2023. Not too late: Changing the climate story from despair to possibility. Haymarket Books.
• Stibbe, A. ed., 2009. The handbook of sustainability literacy: Skills for a changing world. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Swyngedouw, E., 2015. Urbanization and environmental futures: Politicizing urban political ecologies. In The Routledge handbook of political ecology (pp. 609-619). Routledge.
• Taylor, A. (2020). Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene. In Urban nature and childhoods (pp. 13-26). Routledge.

Articles: 

• Ceaușu, S., Hofmann, M., Navarro, L.M., Carver, S., Verburg, P.H. and Pereira, H.M. (2015). Mapping opportunities and challenges for rewilding in Europe. Conservation Biology, 29(4), pp.1017-1027.
• Ertör, I., 2023. ‘We are the oceans, we are the people!’: fisher people’s struggles for blue justice. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 50(3), pp.1157-1186.
• Ferguson, C.E., Bennett, N.J., Kostka, W., Richmond, R.H. and Singeo, A. (2022). The tragedy of the commodity is not inevitable: Indigenous resistance prevents high-value fisheries collapse in the Pacific islands. Global Environmental Change, 73, p.102477.
• Giovannoni, E. and Fabietti, G. (2013). What is sustainability? A review of the concept and its applications. Integrated reporting: Concepts and cases that redefine corporate accountability, pp.21-40.
• O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L., Lamb, W. F., & Steinberger, J. K. (2018). A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature sustainability, 1(2), 88-95.
• Pettorelli, N., Dancer, A.D., Durant, S.M., Hoffmann, M., Laughlin, B., Pilkington, J., Pecorelli, J., Seiffert, S., Shadbolt, T., Terry, A. and Durant, S.M. (2022). Rewilding our cities.
• Richardson, K., Steffen, W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S.E., Donges, J.F., Drüke, M., Fetzer, I., Bala, G., Von Bloh, W. and Feulner, G. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science advances, 9(37), p.eadh2458.
• Virtanen, P.K., Siragusa, L. and Guttorm, H. (2020). Introduction: Toward more inclusive definitions of sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 43, pp.77-82.
• Whyte, K., 2018. Settler colonialism, ecology, and environmental injustice. Environment and society, 9(1), pp.125-144.