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That every student must take some course in Environmental Studies is mandated by the UGC and, we think, for good reasons. At Ashoka, we are convinced that being exposed to and engaging with issues having to do with the role human beings play in our shared environment is an important part of every student’s education. This course will look at a variety of issues from climate change and species extinction, to socio-economic responsibilities and environmental justice, to address the fundamental question of how do we live at peace with nature.
Code: FC-0102-1 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
The contemporary world is beset with growing environmental problems. The global focus on economic growth and development has led us onto an unsustainable path: growing scientific evidence now suggests that the Earth may not be able to cope with the demands imposed on it. This has created an urgent need to critically examine complex environmental issues from a variety of perspectives. It is necessary to inculcate holistic thinking on environmental challenges and their purported solutions, that includes concerns of social and ecological sustainability.
This course will discuss some of the most current concerns related to the environment, as well as societal responses to them, from a multidisciplinary perspective. Water scarcity, climate change, forest degradation, biological extinction, pollution and agrarian distress are some of the issues that will be studied. This course is intended to familiarise students with environmental problems and engender a holistic perspective in understanding causes and possible solutions through the lenses of both science and equity. This course will encourage students to synthesize information across a variety of sources.
Practically the course will be taught using a combination of lectures, movies, slideshows and in-class discussions. Discussion on assigned readings will engender critical thinking and debate in class. Students will undertake group projects on current case studies (such as river pollution, tiger tourism etc.). Assessments will be based on class tests, group projects and class participation.
Code: FC-0102-2 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
Today, world leaders increasingly emphasize the importance of protecting the environment. This idea of how nature and the environment need to be protected has evolved over time—from a focus on preserving untouched wilderness to a more structured discipline centered on biodiversity and wildlife conservation. In this course, we will explore what nature and biodiversity mean to us. We will explore how nature can have many values and meanings – Is it a resource to be managed and safeguarded for human benefit, or does it deserve protection in its own right? We use nature conservation to discuss how new ideas emerge.
We will also discuss what biological diversity is and how we can measure it. Where is biodiversity located and how do we prioritise areas for conservation? We will discuss how ideas towards understanding the natural world emerge, for example Rene Descartes’ bête-machine, E.O. Wilson’s biophilia, Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. Can our ideas about nature shape how we wish to conserve it – should we sell nature to protect it?
Throughout the course, we will underscore that nature conservation problems are multi-faceted. George Schaller describes the social and political nature of conservation – “Instead of being just a biologist, something for which I was trained, I must also be an educator, diplomat, fundraiser, politician, anthropologist…”
Code: FC-0102-3 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
This course is meant to introduce students to nature-society dialectics. We will examine the historical, social, and political processes that shape societal relations with the natural environment. The course has three overarching goals. First, it will help students gain an in-depth understanding of some of the pressing environmental issues of our times, such as the agrarian crisis, climate change, disaster and vulnerability, waste, the industrial food system, struggles over water, and neoliberalization of nature, among others. Second, drawing on a variety of theoretical frameworks, including Marxist, feminist, and post-structuralist perspectives, the course will expose students to a breadth of approaches to environmental questions. Finally, through this course, I hope to be able to inculcate a sense of environmental citizenship in students. The course will be taught using a combination of lectures, discussions, films, and group projects.
Code: FC-0102-4 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
ENVIRONMENT, POLITICS, SOCIETY
Environment has become an important area of interactions between society, politics, economy and culture. This foundation course will focus on diverse sets of social, economic and cultural values and political, ideological and religious views expressed through environment. The course will discuss how ecological issues are understood in different political and economic systems, ideologies and institutions. In turn, the political, ideological and social essence of ecological problems is manifested by deeply contrasting visions of what structuring society according to nature might mean. Taking a historical approach, the course will strengthen the interaction of natural and social sciences in understanding contemporary environmental politics. The course will give close attention to some prominent environmental and social movements in India, which will significantly enhance the knowledge about new developments in environment/politics/society interface.
Code: FC-0102-5 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
Faculty: Simon Alexander Burns Brown
Some of the most pressing issues of our time arise from our impact on the environment. In this course, we will explore questions such as: What obligations, if any, do we have to future generations, other species, or ecosystems, and why? What does it mean for something to be natural, and does something’s being natural inherently make it worth preserving? What are the most pressing environmental issues—what exactly are the main threats associated with climate change, and how should we think about them in relation to other environmental issues such as air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and deforestation? What does justice look like in a world where development may require environmental destruction—or is this a false dichotomy? What kinds of actions (if any) are ethically required of us as individuals: should ordinary citizens leave action on environmental issues to the state, billionaires, and/or corporations, or ought we to make drastic changes in our own lifestyles? How can ordinary citizens determine what to think about complex environmental issues when our information environment is polluted by sophisticated campaigns of misinformation, and can we deal with such problems adequately within a liberal democratic society?
Code: FC-0102-6 | Semester: Monsoon 2025
Faculty: Asmita Kabra
Saving the Planet? Ten Questions on Environment and Society
The course aims to introduce students to a complex, interdisciplinary understanding of environmental issues and challenges, going beyond simplistic discourses of crisis. The pedagogic design is built around ten questions, framed in very simple terms but designed to crack open disciplinary silos to build a multivalent understanding of linked socioecological systems. It exposes students to a diversity of environmental issues, challenges, processes, perspectives, and actors. The objective is to enable students to gain a more nuanced and historicized understanding of the politics of environmental policy and practice.
Part I of the course walks students through the history of environment-development linkages, showing how these linkages have changed over time and are connected specifically to global geo-politics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Part II focuses on extant environmental solutions, mainstream as well as radical, again teasing out their ontological and epistemological foundations. The course draws on theoretical insights from political economy, environmental and ecological economics, institutional theory, and cultural and political ecology.
The course will consist of twelve modules, each covering a week with two lectures of 1.5 hours each. Students will be expected to prepare in advance by reading short pieces and/or watching films. Classroom time will consist of lectures and discussion, with follow-up readings assigned to dig deeper into the ideas thrown up during class.
ghazala.shahabuddin@ashoka.edu.in