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This module focuses on the key legal and policy mechanisms for governing environmental systems and for tackling issues of sustainability, including how they are developed and applied, and their impacts. The overall aim is to understand how policy can influence the interaction between human and environmental systems, key principles for designing better policies, and the challenges facing effective legal and policy frameworks for sustainability. Topics covered: (1) Defining policy for sustainability, (2) Characteristics of key legal and policy approaches for sustainability, (3) Policy formulation and assessment processes, including cost-benefit analysis, (4) Indicators of sustainability and sustainable development, (5) Environmental systems and their governance (6) Key international treaties and agreements concerning the environment (7) The role of nations, regions and cities in the governance of environmental systems, (8) The role of non-state actors in policy and governance of environmental systems. These concepts, frameworks and mechanisms will be illustrated through a wide range of case studies, examining legal and policy approaches as applied in different country contexts, and for different environmental systems and sustainability challenges.

The aims of the module are to:

• Provide a comprehensive overview of how to use policies to manage the interaction between human and environmental systems in a more sustainable way.
• Develop an understanding of how to critically analyse existing policies in relation to environmental challenges in different contexts.

By the end of the module students should be able to:

• Describe key principles and approaches for policy formulation and assessment.
• Describe the key characteristics of different legal and policy instruments to address the challenges of environmental sustainability.
• Describe the role of different state and non-state actors in the formulation and implementation of policy.
• Apply understanding of these principles, characteristics and roles to evaluate a diverse set of case studies encompassing a variety of environmental resources and challenges, and different geographies, to evaluate key elements of success and failure.