Undergraduate - UnitAZA2548 - Environmental policy and resource management

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	School of Social Science, South Africa
Offered	South Africa First semester 2013 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Agnes Babugura

Synopsis

Environmental policy and resource management: A purposeful activity with the aim to maintain and improve the state of the environment and its resources affected by human activities. It addresses the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment and how to ensure that ecosystem are protected and maintained for equitable use by future human generations, and also, maintain ecosystem integrity as an end in itself by taking into consideration ethical, economic, and scientific (ecological) variables. Issues of governance, policy and regulation are adressed. Themes include the internationalisation of environmental policy, the rise of corporate environmentalism, native title and indigenous rights, and the importance of property rights. Environmental impact assessment, social impact assessment, corporate environmental auditing, state of the environment reporting, and public participation.

Outcomes

Understand the social, political and institutional underpinning of environmental policy-making and environmental management;
Recognise the importance of maintaining and extending disciplinary perspectives in environmental policy and management;
Use case studies to help explain the nature of the evolution and implementation of environmental policies in various national and international settings;
Understand the characteristics and role of specific methods and techniques that are used in the context of environmental management and decision making;
Formulate and design policy questions amenable to empirical inquiry;
To develop skills and knowledge for translating the theory and concepts of resource and environmental management into practice relevant to communities and workplaces today;
To apply monitoring and environmental management tools used by resource and environmental practitioners.