Watson International Scholars of the Environment Courses & Modules for 2007

Land-Change Science: Understanding and Managing Ecosystems

Socio-Political Systems & Environmental Equity

Elective Course Audit

1. Core Course Descriptions

• Ecological Economics Course

  Standard economic analysis lacks inherent barriers to macroeconomic scale—a vision of unlimited growth that many ecologists believe conflicts, fundamentally, with ecological realities. Ecological economics holds scale and carrying capacity limits as central to the analysis of human interactions with the environment. The purpose of this module, therefore, is to integrate ecological perspectives with economic analysis while exploring issues of sustainable development and population growth.

  Specific topics include food security and the environmental consequences of agriculture; determinants of food demand and supply, imports and exports, and projections for future regional and global agricultural growth; land use, irrigation, and the environmental impacts of agricultural production techniques; regional problems of declining per capita food production in Africa; land and water limits in Asia; ecosystem impacts in Latin America; and intensive farming techniques in Europe and North America. Additional emphasis is placed on issues of urbanization, trade, energy and resource flow analysis, national income accounting, local food security, impacts of agricultural biotechnology, and techniques for sustainable agricultural production.

2. Modules

• Geographic Information Systems Module

  The GIS module provides a “hands-on” immersion in the use of relational databases in order to explore environmental variation as it occurs both spatially and temporally. Topics include GIS data structures, sources and types; data accuracy; metadata requirements; geospatial relationships; and interdisciplinary applications. Labs entail utilization of GIS software and hardware and provide experience working with spatial data analysis, map features, geographic coordinate systems, and visualization.



• Global Ecological Impact Assessment Module

  This module promotes familiarity with current methods of monitoring, analyzing and predicting environmental responses to human-induced disturbance. A set of tools for ecologically effective environmental management is provided. Examples include rapid biodiversity assessment; assessment of ecological risk introduced by transgenic plants, animals and microbes; and identification of sustainable harvest limits within forest, fishery, rangeland, and crop ecosystems.



• Environmental Conflict Resolution Module

  This module explores theories of conflict and cooperation from various disciplinary perspectives to extract common lessons that may be applied to “real-world” cases. Case studies focus on the practice of conflict resolution, particularly the relative applicability of differing approaches throughout the world.

  Causes of conflicts involving environmental concerns are examined without presuming that environmental disputes are necessarily a cause of conflict—indeed their resolution may be a part of the solution to wider regional conflicts. The emerging field of environmental conflict resolution has its roots in disciplines such as political science, economic game theory, systems analysis, sociology and anthropology. The study of conflict versus cooperation also has an important basis in natural science, particularly in evolutionary biology and ethology. Accordingly, this module draws upon the multi-disciplinary nature of the field to strengthen the environmental negotiation capabilities of participants and their home institutions.



• Social Impact Assessment / Poverty & Environment Module

  In this module participants gain familiarity with techniques for surveying human populations under stress within impoverished ecosystems and economies. Specific tools are likely to include stakeholder analysis, participatory rural appraisal, the assessment of environmental equity, the application of debt and development indicators, and the implementation of community forestry, agriculture, livestock & fisheries production approaches. Participants gain insight into culturally varied modes of environmental perception and into the impacts of economic restructuring, rural to urban migration, forced resettlement and associated development aid projects.



• Global Climate Change Module

  This module will explore the issue of global climate change, with special emphasis on understanding the models that are the key tools used to produce projections of future climate change and its potential impacts. Topics will include an overview of climate change science, focusing on what is known and what remains uncertain in the scientific understanding of this issue; how climate has changed in the past and the outlook for changes over the next century; the kinds of models used to project future climate change and the uncertainties associated with these forecasts; and the evolution and current state of international climate change policy. One laboratory session will be held in which participants will use a freely available modeling tool designed to explore how various kinds of political agreements on greenhouse gas emissions reductions would contribute to limiting future climate change.



• Demographic Process and Pattern Module

  Population is an important factor in many environmental issues. Population size, age structure, and spatial distribution can all contribute to human impacts on the environment, as well as play a role in determining the impact of environmental changes on society. This module will explore alternative conceptual frameworks for viewing the relationship between population and the environment, examine the outlook for future population changes in different world regions, and consider case studies illustrating the role of demographic factors in energy consumption, urban air quality and its impacts on human health, and deforestation. The actual and potential role of population-related policies in environmental issues will also be discussed.



• Multilateral Environmental Governance Module

  The goal of this module is to develop theories of political power and influence in international environmental politics through close readings of case studies of multilateral environmental negotiations, including the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Convention on Biodiversity, and the Convention and Protocols for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea, among others. The work product of the module will be a “user’s guide” to participating in multilateral environmental negotiations.

3. Elective Course Audit
The Program’s design enables each participant in the program to select a single course from Brown’s roster of hundreds, in order to strengthen existing expertise, to expand into a new area of interest, or both. Participants will take the course as an audit (ungraded). Course selections popular with previous Watson Scholars include, but are not limited to:

4. Lateral Skills-Building Workshops
These workshops are optional events, open to the university community, which rapidly introduce and expand professional capabilities in such areas as: applications of financial software packages, statistical analyses, computer programming, wordprocessing, public speaking, writing and project planning.

CURRICULUM REPLICATION

Participants are encouraged to disseminate the curriculum and its components in their home countries upon return. Funds are available to support these efforts, which can result in complete training courses, internet-based distance-learning opportunities, focused workshops and/or professional symposia. In addition, university funding is available to enable qualified Brown undergraduate and graduate students to serve as apprentices, in-country, to those alumni of the program desiring such assistance at no cost. These "multiplier effects" ensure capacity-building at individual, institutional, and national levels.