Protected areas are increasingly recognised by many scientific, advocate and policy actors as being needed to counteract the increasingly evident threats of declining biodiversity and related declines in the flow of ecosystem services. The emphasis is both on increasing protected area coverage (number and size) and on increasing protected area effectiveness (actually conserving habitats and species). GEOG0165 will raise several questions related to protected areas, including: Why is it considered that we need protected areas? What do we mean by ‘effective governance’? How can different governance approaches be combined to provide steer towards effectiveness? How can we reconcile effectiveness and equity issues? Who should be empowered to govern and whose interests will be heard / silenced? How can different knowledges be drawn on to inform governance decisions?

GEOG0165 is a lecture-based course integrating theories and practices of environment and society as reflected in contemporary governance debates. The course explores the science and politics of environmental governance, examining the historical and contemporary practices by which human uses of natural resources have been governed. It analyses the knowledges, models and theories that make up scientific understandings of biodiversity conservation, particularly participative and economic concepts and rationales. Through these areas, and drawing upon debates from various literatures, the course will critically interrogate the ways in which human uses of natural resources in protected areas are considered as governable.

By the end of the course students should be able to: critically evaluate the current practices and discourses of environmental governance in the context of protected areas, including shifts towards co-management and economic approaches, and to have an ‘informed opinion’ on these debates.

The course will draw attention to the multifaceted, historically and geographically situated, and complex nature of debates surrounding environmental governance, drawing upon contemporary research in geography, anthropology and life science studies. The course material will draw on case studies of protected areas from around the world, and students are encouraged to undertake further reading on these and other related case studies

Students will find it useful to have taken GEOG0022 – Environment and Society, but there is no formal pre-requisite.