News
WRM51806 Environmental Justice in Practice | Period 2
Are you curious about different ways you can contribute to environmental justice? Would you like to learn from activists and scientists? Are you eager to unpack conflicting interests, unequal power relations, and diverging views on what ‘development’ should look like? Then join this course, which addresses some of these questions (and raises new ones).
The course is a great opportunity to engage with environmental justice. The course includes three field visits (on campus, in the Netherlands, and a virtual one), and you will have the opportunity to work on real world cases of resource competition: We work together with people who invite your help in assessing their case and related questions, from the Netherlands, India, the Philippines, and Peru.
We encourage you to use these experiences to develop your profile as engaged professional in the field of natural resource conflicts.
The course is part of the BSc minor Natural Resource Conflict and Governance.
Components of the course include:
- Lectures, for example on environmental justice, conflict and cooperation analysis, power dynamics and positionality.
- Group work, in which students engage with real world cases of resource competition. Each case is ‘hosted’ by a case facilitator who presents a specific question. The students are invited to explore their own position based on an analysis of the patterns of power and of in- and exclusion, and to design possible pathways for constructive engagement.
- Excursions, to cases of resource competition, to engage with environmental justice right at our doorstep. During the excursion on the campus we show how issues of Environmental Justice can be found very close to home.
- Tutorials to further discuss the topics of lectures and excursions, and linking them to the group projects.
- Personal & professional reflection: students will take time to reflect on their own position and relation to the people they encounter during their case analysis. They are supported by lectures on positionality and being an environmental subject, on constructive engagement, as well as experiences shared by people from civil society, governmental and private sector organisations.
The course is coordinated by Bert Bruins, Rozemarijn ter Horst and Daniele Tubino de Souza of the Water Resources Management group, with contributions of many lecturers and activists. One lecture remains open, to be designed together with you.