Livelihoods and Environmental Change
Course content
The world is experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes to its environmental resources, with profound effects on people and communities. The course is concerned with rural livelihoods and changing environments, using key concepts and perspectives from core social science disciplines. It is research-based and develops students’ quantitative and qualitative skills through work with original research data.
The focus is on livelihood strategies and how they change over time. We use cases to highlight the relationship between environmental resources, institutional arrangements and livelihood outcomes. We discuss how external factors such as climate change, market forces, and state legislation affect local resource control and access, and how that relates to rural livelihoods.
A key component of the course is its focus on both quantitative and qualitative tools for understanding and analysing rural livelihoods. This provides students with a solid foundation for critically assessing and reflecting on academic representations of livelihoods and linking local issues to wider developmental processes.
MSc Programme in Environment and Development
MSc Programme in Environmental Science
MSc Programme in Forests and Livelihoods (SUTROFOR)
The aim of the course is to provide participants with a thorough
understanding of rural livelihoods and changing environments and to
enable them to critically reflect on methodological and analytical
strategies.
After completing the course the students should be able to:
Knowledge:
Discuss strengths and weaknesses of different livelihoods approaches
Discuss the spatio-temporal variations of livelihoods
Discuss the relationship between local institutions and livelihood outcomes
Discuss how economic, environmental, and political processes affect rural livelihoods
Skills:
Analyse quantitative and qualitative household-level data
Critically assess approaches to livelihood data collection and analysis
Develop methodologies for livelihood analysis
Cooperate with peers to integrate different disciplinary approaches to livelihoods analysis
Competences:
Towards the end of the course, students should be able to critically reflect on and discuss outcomes and processes of rural livelihoods and different methodological and analytical strategies for understanding these.
Blended learning combining e-learning and classroom activities. E-learning is centered on online asynchronous discussions in small groups. Each week, students are asked to (i) read the mandatory literature; (ii) participate in online asynchronous discussions on a particular topic of relevance for the week’s theme (see themes above); and (iii) meet up in class to discuss the reading material and solve livelihoods problems (based on quantitative and qualitative case study data).
The course curriculum consists of state-of-the-art book chapters and journal articles that are made available during the course.
Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree is recommended.
The course is identical to the discontinued course LNAK10083U
Rural Livelihoods and Natural Resources Governance and NIFK18002U
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rural Livelihoods. Therefore you
cannot register for this course, if you have already passed
LNAK10083U Rural Livelihoods and Natural Resources Governance or
NIFK18002U Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rural Livelihoods.
If you are registered with examination attempts in LNAK10083U Rural
Livelihoods and Natural Resources Governance or NIFK18002U
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rural Livelihoods without having
passed the course, you have to use your last examination attempts
to pass the exam in this course. You have a total of three
examination attempts.
Lecturer’s written feedback on online discussions, peer feedback on online discussions, lecturer’s written feedback on written assignments, lecturer’s oral feedback during in-class empirical exercises.
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
-
PortfolioThe assessment has three components: (i) continuous assessment of participation in online discussions (20% of final grade); (ii) Exam 1 (30%, needs to be submitted by mid-December), an individual essay of 1000 words; and (iii) Exam 2 (50%, submitted on last day of course) in which students are individually solve a problem using a combination of qualitative and quantitative insights and write a 2000 words paper describing the solution. Exam 2 starts from week 6 and there will be weekly opportunities for asking questions and getting feedback.
- Aid
- All aids allowed
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
one internal examiner
Criteria for exam assessment
See description of 'Learning outcome'
Single subject courses (day)
- Category
- Hours
- Lectures
- 12
- Class Instruction
- 24
- Preparation
- 100
- Practical exercises
- 16
- E-Learning
- 24
- Exam
- 30
- English
- 206
Kursusinformation
- Language
- English
- Course number
- NIFK20007U
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Programme level
- Full Degree Master
- Duration
-
1 block
- Schedulegroup
-
A
- Capacity
- Maximum 40 participants
- Studyboard
- Study Board of Natural Resources, Environment and Animal Science
Contracting department
- Department of Food and Resource Economics
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Science
Course Coordinators
- Mattias Borg Rasmussen (3-6f6474426b687471306d7730666d)
- Mariève Pouliot (4-70647372436c697572316e7831676e)
Teacher
Mattias Borg Rasmussen
Mariéve Pouliot
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Courseinformation of students