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International Environmental Justice and the Climate Change Challenge
This course module is one section of a larger course called Geography, Development and Environment that runs as a first year course in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town.
The course work provided here is one of 3 modules including 1) the global economic environment, 2) regional dynamics of development, and 3) the North-South debates on environmental problems. This module falls under the theme of North-South debates on environmental problems. The courses use theories of underdevelopment and climatic change to explain global and regional inequalities and environmental problems. Key concepts in the course are: trade, foreign aid, regional integration, and climatic change.
The objectives of this section of the course are to begin understanding:
1. the concepts of environmental justice and climate change,
2. the relationship between environmental change and development, and
3. the international politics of global environmental change,
This topic provides the scope for debate among students because of the contentious nature of the subject, and the lack of clear answers. Importantly this course focuses on presenting multiple explanations and diverse viewpoints and is intended to provide context, history and structure for students’ thinking. Students are not provided with solutions, but instead encouraged to develop their own explanations and responses to climate change and justice.
This 4 week module, supported by powerpoint slides, uses climate change to explore key environmental and geographical issues including: justice, scale, international equality, global political processes, and environmental change.
We begin by examining the foundation and principles of the environmental movement, distinguishing between different types of environmentalism and articulating early environmental conflicts between the North and South (presentations 1, 2, 4). We then develop ideas of environmental justice (presentation 3) and how it applies to climate change.
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- Faculty: Environmental and Geographical Science, Science
- Media Types: Downloadable Documents
- Material Type: Lecture Notes
- Language: English
- Level: Post-secondary
"International Environmental Justice and the Climate Change Challenge" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
