Leiden University College

This is an introduction to the field of Environmental Science, with a focus on ecosystems and biodiversity. The course focuses on how human disturbances affect individuals, populations, and communities. The course also discusses which mechanisms organisms have developed to deal with these stressors. In addition, the course examines the key methods which are available to study environmental impacts (e.g. field, modelling and lab studies), to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of these tools when assessing environmental impacts. Students develop a population model, and use the model to assess impacts of anthropogenic stressors in the population of animals. Students also conduct a group research project, which includes basic study design and data collection. Students gain theoretical insights in the classroom, and apply this knowledge during the research project.

This course focuses on our environment(s), which function as public goods in providing benefits but can, as common pool goods, be affected by the positive or negative externalities resulting from private behavior. Although `‘the environment'' is often defined as nature (e.g., land, water, air), it is more broadly defined to include the shared spaces (e.g., markets, classrooms, websites, electromagnetic spectrum) that nobody owns but everyone gains from. The course explores the value of environments, discusses how actions produce positive and negative impacts on environments, evaluates the magnitude of those impacts, and discusses different theories for managing and methods of protecting environments in the traditions of Pigou, Coase, and Ostrom. A knowledge of microeconomics is useful but not essential to this class (basic concepts will be reviewed and taught). Among other ideas, the course discusses assessing the incentives for behaviors and distribution of costs and benefits from policies (e.g., polluter pays, discounting, and mis-matched political-economic jurisdictions) as well as how aggregated environmental impacts and policies alter the market landscape within and among countries (e.g., pollution havens, and intergenerational equity, and environmental Kuznets curve). Students apply these ideas to a course paper on the topic of their choice that uses a cost-benefit analysis of market and non-market values to explore the existing distribution of costs and benefits as well as policy proposals that might move the distribution (and overall impact) of those polices closer to sustainability.

This course is a systematic examination of current scholarly debates about vulnerability and care, using gender as analytic lens. Against the dominant liberal premise of individual autonomy, this course explores the fundamental inter-dependence and eco-dependence character of sociality and individuality. Gender is approached from different perspectives ranging from feminism to ecofeminism, including post-structuralist and post-humanist thinkers. The aim of the course is to engage in these scholarly debates in connection to concrete case-studies and the ethical dilemmas derived from them.