THE ENVIRONMENT & GLOBAL SECURITY
Introduction
Virtually all human activities interrupt the operation of Earth's environmental systems and their observed consequences have increased with the size and technical prowess of human populations. Their impact on Earth's boundary layer ~ the instable envelope embracing the landsurface, lower atmosphere and oceans on which we and all other biological systems depend for our existence ~ is deliberate in part and inadvertent in others. Unprecedented rates of rapid environmental change are now beyond doubt and generate concern amongst the international community, corporations and governments. Global economic and political security depend on the accuracy of scientific predictions of global environmental change, technological capacity to respond and political will to reduce or mitigate their impacts.
Why have global environmental crises arisen? What triggered dramatic increases in environmental awareness, placing environmental issues firmly on international agendas? How can we avoid or mitigate their effects; what will happen if we cannot? These questions, and expertise to answer them, concern students and practitioners across the socio-economic, political and natural sciences. Future successful earth management and socio-economic and political stability demand that we understand our environmental impact. Failure by wealthy, hi-tech industrialised nations to respond to environmental impacts of sustained development will raise international tension amongst disadvantaged and marginilised nations.
Academic Aims
The prime aim of the Option is to extend awareness and understanding of key global environmental crises facing the international community to students irrespective of their academic backgrounds. This Option identifies the principal components and dynamics of natural environmental systems, in the context of rapid natural climate and environmental changes of the Quaternary “Ice Age”. It then examines ways in which industrial, agricultural and other activities of human societies interrupt their operation, generating environmental disturbance and change. Impacts leave tell-tale signatures so an important early step is to examine and evaluate the nature of surviving evidence for environmental impacts and changes.
With these cause-and-effect relationships established, a number of crucial aspects of global environmental crises are examined, with particular focus on the British Isles and Western Europe. This region is the most heavily industrialized and populated zone on Earth and its intensive agricultural systems, under the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, render it self-sufficient in temperate foods. It also possesses one of the longest continuous records of human occupation since the most recent worldwide glaciation. Inevitably, much of the origins and consequences of rapid environmental change are found here; the Option studies transnational and transcultural responses in Britain and the European Union.
As maritime nations, swept by North Atlantic atmospheric and ocean influences which sustain anomalously warm climates for their latitude, the British Isles and other northwest European states provide an exceptional range of landscapes sensitive to involuntary and deliberate environmental change. This living laboratory is drawn on for a series of case studies which examine environmental crises in our atmospheric, hydrological and biological habitats and place them in their global context. The Option may also, from time to time, draw on expertise in Oxford's School of Geography & Environment and Environmental Change Institute, and Statutory Authorities in the field of environmental conservation & management in the UK.
Academic Programme
Key Lectures and Seminars provide a general review of the principal themes, which students then explore in more detail in Tutorial essays or seminar papers, choosing a weekly topic from the list below:
Week 1: Nature & Context of Earth’s Environmental Systems
Key Illustrated Lecture : The Landscape legacy of the Late Quaternary Ice Age in BritainSeminar/Tutorial : Archaeology & Geology ~ environmental detectives. Scientific & documentary evidence of environmental change in the Landscape.
Week 2: Climate Change: past & present
Key Illustrated Lecture : Atmospheric-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs)Seminar/Tutorial :Quaternary cold & temperate stages. Holocene climate ~ the past 10,000 yrs. The Medieval Warm Epoch (c. AD 800-1300) & Little Ice Age (c. AD 1350- 1850).
Week 3: Global Climate Forecast to AD 2100
Key Illustrated Lecture : Global warming & the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Seminar/Tutorial : “Greenhouse”enhancement. Ocean-Icesheet response. Atmosphere-Ocean circulation.
Week 4: Landsurface Impacts of Global Climate Change
Seminar : Earth-Atmosphere interactive systems ~ thermal, hydrologic & biospheric regimes & responses.
Tutorial : Sea level change & Coastline Management. Water Resources. Agriculture & the Biosphere. River Management & Slope Instability.
Week 5: Securing Earth’s Environmental Future
Seminar : Governance of the Environment.
Tutorial : International environmental treaties & protocols. Greenhouse emisions Environmental protection, conservation & management. Sustainable Development.
Preliminary Reading
General texts, intended as useful introductions and background. Students undoubtedly benefit from some reading prior to arrival in Oxford, when more detailed lists accompany Tutorial essay titles are distributed.
- Smithson, P., Addison, K. & Atkinson, K., 2002, Fundamentals of the Physical Environment, (3rd Edtn.) Routledge, (ISBN 0-415-23294-5)
- IPCC, 2001: Climate Change 2002: Synthesis Report. A Contribution to Working Groups I, II & III To the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, [Watson, R.T and the Core Writing Team 9eds.)], Cambridge (UK), New York: Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 0-521-01507-3)
- Lamb, H.H., 1995, Climate, History and the Modern World, (2nd Edtn), Routledge (ISBN 0-415-12735-1)
- Ruddiman, W.F., 2000, Earth's Climate : Past and Future, W.H. Freeman & Co. (ISBN 0-7167-3741-8)
- Vogler, J., 2000, The Global Commons : Environmental & Technical Governance, Second Edition, Chichester, (UK), New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (ISBN 0-471-98574-0)