Development and Environment in the Anthropocene

This course is available for in-person and remote (online) learning. The human civilization is experiencing a rapidly changing climate, loss of bio-diversity and a steadily degrading environment. Many of these changes were brought onto the Earth by human action, leading scholars and experts to call it 'the Anthropocene', a geological era in which the human species have become dominant over all others. This course exposes students to the most contentious issues related to development and the environment in the Anthropocene, and examine their connections. It critically builds on the ideas within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), exploring a wide variety of thematic topics and a great deal of academic debate through 12 exciting topics or themes or modules, in each of which a couple of readings are given as 'core' or 'required' readings. These readings aim to present a range of research-based arguments and debates, and reflect the wider implications of these thematic topics for understanding the relationship between the economic, social, and political processes associated with development and the real-life practice of environmental and natural resource management. The course will expose students to wider debates on sustainability and nature in context of development. From setting the scene with the SDGs, the course will discuss issues around the Anthropocene, Nine Planetary Boundaries, climate change, extractivism, energy transition, agrarian transformation, waters and rivers, and methodological approaches such as Political Ecology as well as theoretical issues such as the epistemology of the environment.