Environmental Leadership and Management MSc

This module will provide an introduction to the central issues facing people and the environment in the Anthropocene. The first half of module will explore key themes and approaches for understanding these environmental issues. These may include environmental knowledge(s), risk perception, ecosystem services, environmental governance, gender issues, and legal perspectives.

The second half of the module will engage with these concepts in the context of current environmental issues, such as climate change, pollution, biodiversity, urbanisation, and water management.

This module will introduce you to a breadth of techniques relevant to addressing practical environmental challenges. These techniques relate to human and physical components of environmental problems and engage with quantitative and qualitative data. You will be required to integrate these methods and address a real-world environment challenge.

This module will also incorporate:

• preparation for the Project in Environmental Leadership and Management
• methods for designing and implementing studies to assess environmental impacts of human activity
• stakeholder mapping and engagement
• methods for aiding decision-making under uncertainty
• common statistical techniques for analysing environmental data
• displaying data clearly to communicate to diverse audiences
• extracting information from various textual sources
• spatial representation of environmental information

You will firstly be exposed to different ways in which environmental leadership has been understood in the literature. This includes emphasis on the person of the leader, the position they are in, or the process they take.

Key themes to be explored include:

• conceptions of environmental leadership and how these differ from other 'traditional' leadership theories
• the role of personal character strengths in leadership style and efficacy
• attributes of environmental leadership in different applied contexts

The second component of the module will be student-led and consist of live interviews with existing environmental leaders from different sectors. These will form the basis for inquiry into your own concept of environmental leadership.

The module covers:

• definitions and classifications of projects
• objectives in project management - time, costs, quality
• resources and resource management
• Critical Path Methods and resource scheduling
• performance measurement and costs
• project lifecycles
• project teams and leadership in project management
• managing risk in projects
• analysis of project successes and failures
• project management software

This module will examine the role of leadership in the public sector. It will discuss different concepts of:

• leadership
• organisational culture and change
• performance in the public sector
• the use of knowledge and information in organisation learning
• performance improvement in public sector organisations
• the use of strategy in the public sector

You will study different models and approaches to these concepts, how they are affected by and interact with the policy environment, and how they influence each other.

This module is delivered by an external training provider (Goodman Wilkinson Associates). Assessment and teaching will be modified to ensure that the standard of the content can be accredited at masters level, resulting in you receiving a Level 5 certificate by the ILM which also contributes to your MSc.

This module includes:

• an introduction to the climate system
• attribution of climate change to human causes
• an introduction to climate modelling
• understanding uncertainty in projections of future climate change
• scenarios of future climate and socioeconomic change

This module covers:

• the impacts of climate change on the oceans, food security, forests, water scarcity, extreme events and human health
• mitigation of, and adaptation to, the impacts of future climate change
• communication and perception of climate change
• the role played by policy-makers and NGOs in climate change adaptation and mitigation

This module will present key concepts to understand ecosystem function and processes, humans' place in natural systems, and basic tools and goals for ecosystem management and conservation. Specific themes include:

• Introduction to biodiversity and ecosystem function and processes
• Ecosystem services – how humans depend on ecological systems
• Human impacts on biodiversity and ecological systems 
• Consequences of the conservation crisis 
• Ecosystem management and conservation – goals and tools for sustainability and conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems
• In-depth case studies of management and conservation

Across the world species and ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes from human activities such as the conversion of natural areas to settlement and agriculture and for forestry, resulting in habitat loss, ecosystem degradation and fragmentation. This module aims to provide a critical and sophisticated understanding of the theory and practice of systematic conservation planning and practice.

The module is taught using a real-world case study project in order to teach the practical skills required for delivering on-the-ground actions that achieve conservation goals such as the expansion of reserve networks and identification of areas for restoration. The module focuses not only on teaching conservation planning methods but also providing an understanding of the social, planning and policy context in which they are applied.

This module will focus on the following themes:

• Key river and catchment processes 
• Impacts of anthropogenic (ie climate, land-use) change on rivers and catchments
• Current and historic river/catchment management practises 
• Tools and techniques for monitoring and mapping rivers and catchments
• Modelling rivers and catchments to test management scenarios

This module provides an overview of water quality assessment techniques, including chemical, biological, sensor and long-term reconstruction methods. The majority of the module will be taught as part of a residential three-day field course, supplemented with laboratory practical work. You will get hands-on experience in techniques and their application.

The module will be underpinned training in the by a theoretical understanding of the water quality and its drivers at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Training will include how to devise appropriate water quality management plans and use of benchmarking tools from environmental monitoring agencies.