Environmental problems in the United States and in Latin American countries

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The course provides basic knowledge of environmental problems in the United States and in Latin American countries allowing to understand complexity and diversity of their perception in the historical, spatial and social dimensions.

It covers such issues as: determinants of thinking about nature, an outline of American environmental history, the beginnings of the idea of nature protection; environmental conditions and consequences of the economic growth model, challenges related to the sustainable economy model and climate change, environmental issues within social movements' agendas

1. Thinking about nature; inventing nature;

2/3. Nature and society in indigenous communities. (General approaches; Cases from the North and from the South)

4/5/6/7 An outline of the Americas' environmental history I. Colonial Encounters; wilderness transformed; nature and the market economy; nature and the urban; conservation, preservation, American national parks - history, distribution, values;

contexts: nature protection and tourism; national parks and indigenous peoples, parks and the national imaginary; nature and growth, development, energy, resources - environmental problems of the 20th century - the curse of extractivism)

8. Ecology, environmentalism, American environmental organizations and movements (US); Legal environmental regulations; EPA

9. Sustainability as a new public discourse - theory and practice of sustainability; Critiques of sustainability

10./11 Environmental conflicts in Latin America. Environment within Latin American social movement agenda.

12. Latin American Transformative Initiatives

13/14/15. Climate change and environmental challenges - examples of particularly vulnerable areas, challenges related to their management: (Sustainable cities? large North and South American agglomerations in the context of sustainable development; coastal areas, dry and semi-dry areas, The Amazon, Alaska, Hawaii, etc.)

Escobar, A., 1992 Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements, Social Text , No. 31/32, pp. 20-56

Gudynas E., 2018 Extractivisms Tendencies and consequences, in:

Eduardo Gudynas In: Reframing Latin American Development.Ronaldo Munck and Raúl Delgado Wise, eds. Routledge

Klein E., Morreo C.E. (eds) , 2019 Postdevelopment in Practice. Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies, Routledge

Lalander R., 2014 Rights of nature and the indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Ecuador:

a Straitjacket for Progressive development Politics? Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo / Iberoamerican Journal of Development Studies

Volumen/volume 3, número/issue 2 (2014), pp. 148-173. ISSN: 2254-2035

Macnaughten Ph., Urry J., 1998 Contested Natures, Sage Publ., [Alternatywne Przyrody. Nowe myślenie o przyrodzie i społeczeństwie, Wyd. Scholar, 2005]

Mayda Ch., 2012 A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada: Toward a Sustainable Future, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Merchant C., American Environmental History: An Introduction Columbia University Press 2007

Knowledge

- knowledge of the inter-dependability of the people and their natural environment and the social, economic and political systems that they created understands the concept of sustainability and its implications in the Americas

Skills

- ability to identify environmentally vulnerable areas of Americas and to describe the features that characterize them as well as the features of the people, who live there and manage them

- ability to notice the meaning and to analyze and critically interpret the environmental and spatial conditioning and consequences of social and economic processes undergoing in the Americas

- ability to use thematic maps

Social competences:

- Openness to various phenomena and ideas; recognition of and respect for cultural difference

- ability to think spatially about environmental issues framing life and landscape in the Americas.

- critical thinking skills concerning issues that affect people and places in the Americas

Active, regular participation and weekly tasks on the platform – 50%

Final assignment – 50%

Written final assignment (multimedia enhanced short essay)