Environment and development policy

Course Information

首页 Course Information 2025 International Development and the Global South

Environment and development policy

Instructor Name

Tim Forsyth

Instructor Biography

Tim Forsyth is Professor of Environment and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has lived and worked in Asia for more than five years. He specializes in environmental governance, especially the challenges of integrating local livelihoods into global environmental policy. His work is cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and has contributed to the work done by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He has also been an advisor to the UK Parliament on climate change and development twice.

Course Description

This course introduces core themes about environmental policy in developing countries. The course will address poverty and environment, population growth and resource scarcity, gender and environment, natural disasters, climate change policy, forests, and biodiversity policy. The course uses a political and institutional analysis and will not use quantitative analysis. The course will show how “environment and development” requires rethinking environmental problems experienced among poorer and transitional societies and building new institutions that integrate local development concerns with global environmental objectives.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course students will understand:

The political nature of environmental problems and solutions
The relationships of poverty and environment, especially in developing countries
The academic theories of institutions to understand communal action for conservation
Challenges of understanding climate change and biodiversity beyond simple biophysical changes
Institutional structures of new policies to govern agricultural commodities and landscape change

Course Schedule

Lecture	Topic (2.5 teaching hours)
1	Varieties of Environmentalism and Institutions Reading Forsyth, T. and Sikor, T. (2013) ‘Forests, development, and the globalization of justice, The Geographical Journal, 179: 2 114-121. s Brockington, D. and Igoe, J. (2006). ‘Eviction for Conservation. A Global Overview.’ Conservation and Society 4 (3): 424-70. Keohane, Robert O., & Victor, David G. (2011). The regime complex for climate change. Perspectives on politics 9(1): 7-23.
2	Environmental scarcity and population: what is adaptation to resource scarcity? Reading Batterbury, S & Forsyth, T (1999). 'Fighting Back: human adaptations in marginal environments' Environment 41(6) 6-11, 25-30. Brown, K. (2017). Global environmental change II: Planetary boundaries - A safe operating space for human geographers? Progress in Human Geography, 41(1), 118-130. Cafaro, P., Hansson, P., & Götmark, F. (2022). Overpopulation is a major cause of biodiversity loss and smaller human populations are necessary to preserve what is left. Biological Conservation, 272, 109646. Hughes, A. C., Tougeron, K., et al (2023). Smaller human populations are still not a necessary condition for biodiversity conservation: A response to Cafaro et al. (2023). Biological Conservation, 282, 110053.
3	The politics of environmental science and expert organizations: how do we know problems and solutions? Reading Davis, D. (2005) Indigenous knowledge and the desertification debate: problematizing expert knowledge in North Africa, Geoforum 36:4 509-24. Hulme, M., Mahony, M., Beck, S., Görg, C., et al (2011). Science-policy interface: Beyond assessments. Science, 333, 6043. Hulme, M. (2010). Problems with making and governing global kinds of knowledge. Global Environmental Change, 20(4), 558-564.
4	Gender and environment: how to understand agency in environmental policy Reading Nightingale A, 2006, 'The nature of gender: work, gender, and environment' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(2) 165 – 185 Leach, M. 2007. Earth Mother Myths and other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell, in Development and Change, 38(1): 67-85.
5	Natural hazards: why are some people more vulnerable than others? Reading Gaillard, J. (2019). Disaster studies inside out. Disasters, 43(S1), S7-S17. Méndez, M., Flores-Haro, G., & Zucker, L. (2020). The (in)visible victims of disaster: Understanding the vulnerability of undocumented Latino/a and indigenous immigrants. Geoforum, 116, 50-62. Moser, C. (1998) ‘The asset vul framework: reassessing urban poverty reduction strategies,’ World Development 26: 1-19
6	Climate change and global risk: what is the best form of adaptation? Reading Nightingale, A. J., Eriksen, S., Taylor, M., Forsyth, T. et al. (2020). Beyond Technical Fixes: climate solutions and the great derangement. Climate and development, 12(4), 343-352. Kashwan, P., & Ribot, J. (2021). Violent Silence: The Erasure of History and Justice in Global Climate Policy. Current History, 120(829), 326-331. Eriksen, S., Schipper, E. L. F.,et al. (2021). Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance? World Development, 141, 105383. Hartmann, B. 2010 Rethinking climate refugees and climate conflict: Rhetoric, reality and the politics of policy discourse, Journal of International Development 22: 2 233-246.
7	Institutions theory: Common Property Regime theory and criticisms Reading Forsyth, T. and Johnson, C. (2014) ‘Elinor Ostrom’s legacy: governing the commons and the rational choice controversy,’ Development and Change 45:5 Hardin, G. (1968) ‘The Tragedy of the Commons,’ Science (Vol. 162, 13 December), pp. 1243. Ostrom, E. (2010). Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change. Global Environmental Change, 20(4), 550-557. Dressler, W., Büscher, B., et al (2010). From hope to crisis and back again? A critical history of the global CBNRM narrative. Environmental Conservation, 37(1), 5–15
8	Global climate change policy Reading Falkner, Robert. (2016) The Paris Agreement and the New Logic of International Climate Politics. International Affairs 92(5): 1107-1125. Holz, Christian, Sivan Kartha, and Tom Athanasiou. 2018. Fairly Sharing 1.5: National Fair Shares of a 1.5 Compliant Global Mitigation Effort. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 18(1): 117-134. Kreienkamp, Julia (2019) The Long Road to Paris: The History of the Global Climate Change Regime, UCL Global Governance Institute Policy Brief
9	Global biodiversity policy and governing agricultural commodities Reading Brockington, D. and Igoe, J. 2006. ‘Eviction for Conservation. A Global Overview.’ Conservation and Society 4 (3): 424-70. Castellanos-Navarrete, A., de Castro, F., & Pacheco, P. (2021). The impact of oil palm on rural livelihoods and tropical forest landscapes in Latin America. Journal of Rural Studies, 81, 294-304. Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Fa, J. et al. (2024). No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories. Nature, 633(8028), 32-35. Oberthür, Sebastian , Justyna Pożarowska. 2013. Managing Institutional Complexity and fragmentation: The Nagoya Protocol and the Global Governance of Genetic Resources. Global Environmental Politics 13(3): 100–118.
10	Climate change and forests: REDD+, climate, and forests Reading Suiseeya, Kimberly R. Marion. 2017. Contesting Justice in Global Forest Governance: The Promises and Pitfalls of REDD+. Conservation and Society 15(2): 189-200. Forsyth, T., & Springate-Baginski, O. (2021). Are landscape approaches possible under authoritarianism? Multi-stakeholder governance and social transformation in Myanmar Environmental Science & Policy, 124, 359-369. Mwangi E, Wardell A (2012) Multi-level governance of forest resources. International Journal of the Commons 6: 79-103.

Student Assessment

Individual assignment (1500 words maximum) (75%)

Students will choose a question from a list given to them on the first day. This question will refer to one important part of the course. The essay should demonstrate analysis and critical thinking.

Final Group presentation (50%)

The final assignment is a group presentation in the last class. The presentation should have an in-depth discussion of a solution related to climate change and a case that interests you. The lecturer will discuss with you how to do that in Class 1.