Environmental Leadership and Management MSc

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.

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.

Sustainable companies are those that are managed in socially, economically, and ecologically responsible ways. Today's managers are expected to understand the impact of management decisions and practices on the environment and society.

This module considers how sustainability principles are applied in organisations, and how to manage for sustainability. Through use of multiple learning approaches, the module enables you to practically interact with real businesses to address some sustainability challenges faced by the organisation.

The module introduces the you to frameworks and theories use to critically assess sustainability, and to integrate sustainability into the business strategy.

The module enables you to develop an understanding of the practical dilemmas facing businesses as they seek to respond to multiple, and often, conflicting stakeholders expectations. You will be expected to critically reflect upon your practical experiences and capture these using a learning journal.

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

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.

In this module you will conduct a detailed independent analysis of an applied environmental leadership or management challenge of your choice. Working alongside a partner environmental organisation, you will develop skills in project design, independent inquiry, solution development and communication.

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 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 will cover issues around the management of uncertainty and trade-offs, enhancing co-benefits between mitigation and adaptation, adapting to multiple risks in complex systems, understanding climate governance and notions of climate justice.

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

This module will introduce you to theoretical perspectives on environmental knowledge and action, such as environmental governance, social learning, co-production and the science-policy interface.

Through interactive exercises and student-led enquiry, specialist knowledge from throughout the degree programme will be interrogated and applied to real-world environmental challenges.

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