GEOG 328 - Sustainability and Natural Resources

This course uses social science perspectives on sustainability and sustainable development to analyze the production and consumption of major natural resources. The course addresses the following questions: What are natural resources, and how do their geographies combine with those of wealth and poverty, of political power and technological and institutional capacity, to affect the potential for actions towards sustainable development? How is our understanding of sustainable resource development enriched by critical perspectives from the social sciences about the meaning of such contested concepts as sustainability and development, and about issues of equity, power, participation, property rights, and unequal impacts (of both resource depletion and environmental policies)? How can the three dimensions (environmental, social, economic) of sustainability better guide the production and consumption of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, in different places and by different actors? The topical and regional focus of the course varies from year to year; it may, for example, focus on oil (or energy more generally), on minerals, or on biological and genetic resources; and on specific geographic areas, such as central New York, Latin America, or the Arctic.

Credits: 1.00
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: No First-year
Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents
Liberal Arts CORE: None

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