Meets the following requirements: HS   

What do global warming, biodiversity loss, deforestation, loss of topsoil and desertification, increased risk to hazards such as floods and tsunamis, and coral reef decline have in common? All of these environmental challenges most strongly come to bear in developing countries. A triad of features in particular make environmental issues in developing countries a particularly vexing human ecological dilemma: some of the world's greatest natural resources and most relatively intact ecological systems are in developing countries, yet these countries have scant resources for environmental protection AND have large populations of poor people directly dependent on the environment for their livelihood and well-being. This course examines these issues and how people (in both the developing and developed worlds) are responding to them. We start with a survey of the salient environmental issues, then examine their common and different social, political, economic, and cultural frameworks.  In particular, we will explore modernist socioeconomic development and globalization and examine how they contribute to and try to deal with such environmental challenges, and focus on emerging local responses/strategies and transnational activist networks (that some observers refer to as grassroots or postmodern development). A myriad of subthemes emerge from this study, such as poverty, gender, sovereignty issues, corruption, subaltern resistance, and the roles of elites. Evaluation is based on classroom participation, responses to reading questions, and a final project involving assessment and recommendations in regard to an issue of the student's choosing. Introductory/Intermediate. *HS*. Lab fee: $20.