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Instructor:  Prof. Lee M. Talbot

Overview:

 This course will provide an overview of environmental policy and the impacts of policy on environment in Latin America. The focus will be on Ecuador (including the Galapagos Islands) as the principal case history, but the issues and principles involved apply throughout the continent.  Through lectures, case studies and discussions this course will examine environment and policy in Latin America. It will consider the status and trends in environmental conditions; review the relationship between policy and environmental issues, consider the background and history leading up to the present situations, analyze the factors (including the underlying causes) which have led to the present situations, and consider what may be required to achieve more effective and sustainable results. Issues will be examined from ecological, socio-economic and policy perspectives, with emphasis on present status and trends, underlying causes, and possible policy-related solutions.

 Among the issues to be covered are the following: Causes of increasing resource scarcity and environmental degradation; Fundamental policy issues related to environmental degradation; Deforestation; Farmland and soil degradation; Water resources; Petroleum industry pollution and other environmental problems related to mining; Fisheries, shrimp mariculture and coastal ecosystems; Biodiversity conservation, especially in the Galapagos; Tourism; and Environment and development.

Text: Economic Progress and the Environment: One Developing Country’s Policy Crisis.
 Douglas Southgate and Morris Whitaker, Oxford University Press, 1994.

 Other reading will be assigned from time to time.

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